CORRESPONDENCE 



ON THE 



PRESENT RELATIONS 



GREAT BRITAIN 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



BOSTON: ', ,^;';" 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, 

110, Washington Street. 

1862. 






BOSTON: 

printki) 1$y john wilson and son, 

5, Water Street. 



P. 

Arba Blodgi| 
as. F. Oil 



/ 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The following Correspondence between an English and an 
American lawyer was not written with any purpose of 
publication. It is now printed by the advice of a few 
friends, by whom the letters were read as they were writ- 
ten or received ; and who are of opinion that such a frank 
interchange of vieAvs, entertained by individuals on either 
side, possessing similar means of somewhat extensive in- 
formation, entertaining each for the other cordial esteem, 
and entirely free from any pre-existing national prejudices 
or ill-will which could unfavorably temper the discussion, 
might aid in the fui'mation of correct' opinions upon the 
painful relations subsisting between the people of England 
and the people of the loyal States of America in reference 
to the Rebellion. 

No apology, therefore, need be made for the careless- 
ness of style incidental to an off-hand correspondence ; 
nor for the incompleteness of views, which, under other 
circumstances, might have been more carefully elaborated. 

It is necessary to explain that the '^ letter in j^rint," 
alluded to in Letter I., was an article in a daily newspaper 
on the Trent affair, written by the American correspondent, 
(his initials being attached to it,) and by him forwarded to 
his friend in London, not, however, in the form of a letter, 
or addressed to any one but the editor of the newspaper. 

Boston, November, 1862. 



« ^ 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



I. 

Squire's Mount, IIampstead, 
16th January, 18G2. 

My dear Friend, 

A letterfrom you, even though it be in print, and on 
that wearisome subject of " The Trent outrage^' is wel- 
come at the old house you remember, on the top of 
Hampstead Hill. I am so infamous a correspondent, 
that, knowing I never write at all unless at once, I have 
passed, and am now performing, a vow to acknowledge 
it before I go to bed to-night. 

You will, ere this, have foimd argument enough on 
the Trent subject in our and the French newspapers. 
I am not going to discuss the question. We Enghsh 
have been the great sinners on these matters, insisting 
on drassmi? others mto the vortex of our own wars ; 
and out of our own mouths you should be content to 
judge us. On the question, " What should an admiralty 
coiu't have done, had the ' San Jacmto ' brought up 
the 'Trent' for adjudication V it seems to me that 
the " Hendrik and Alida" case is indisputable. You 
American lawyers are so much more versed in in- 
ternational law than we are, that I wonder you have 

1 



2 THE PRESENT EELATIONS BETWEEN 

none of you cited that case. I am surprised that your 
lawyers have not felt more the mcongruity of the view, 
which, having obtained the right of search and of 
blockade as against neuters by admitting the Slave 
States to be belligerents, still claims to hold these bel- 
ligerents rebels ; and I am satisfied that INIr. Seward, 
with his now declared views, would have been wiser 
to have acted on them on the moment of receiving news 
of the capture^ instead of putting the knaves tempo- 
rarily into dungeons of the condemned-cell class. 

One thing shoidd come out of this aiFair, — a better 
rule as to the right of search and the law of contraband. 
I trust, if we ask too wide a rule, we shall be cut down. 
The " Journal des Debats " (the most favorable, to your 
views, of the French papers) said the other day to this 
effect : "It will never do to stretch the rights of bel- 
ligerency and search in this way. We French have 
the -good fortune to be at war with the Emperor of 
Cochm China. We have the advantage of being 
belligerents, and to possess, according to the idea con- 
tended for, a universal right of search. We may, 
therefore, search every packet-boat between Dublm 
and Holyhead, as long as it pleases us to go on fighting 
the Brother of the Sun and Moon," &c., &c. 

Why should not we English keep up our coveted 
right of search on the African coast by reason of our 
belligerency with the Caffres or New-Zealanders % 
These questions, to me, seem to suggest the absolute 
necessity of hmitmg the right, if not of search, at least 
of capture. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 3 

But I notice your letter principally because it affirms 
a desire to exist here " for war with America, and 
also the existence of a long-cherished hatred towards 
you and your mstitutions." If the " New-York Herald" 
had made such a charge, I could have understood it ; 
but that you, or any wise, moderate philosopher in 
Massachusetts, should hold such a fancy, is to us a 
marvel beyond expression. We got your letter yes- 
terday ; and, on readmg it in our chcle, there was a 
perfect outcry, " What on earth will be the next dream 
of our dear friends ? Will they think we are canni- 
bals, and want to pick theh bones white ? " Let me tell 
you, that if any thing can be now spoken of English- 
men, imlversaUy, more than another, it is of then most 
earnest desire not to quarrel with their brother 
Anglo-Saxons of the North United States. Include 
the cotton-men of Lancashhe even, and you could 
not find many dozen men in all the realm to whom 
the prospect of such a war would not be (nay, was 
not the other day) as humiliating as the notion would 
be, that he had on him the stern necessity of fighting 
a duel with say a brother or brother-in-law. We 
have here a feelmg, all but universal, agaiust the 
divine right of slaveholding, quite, when we look at 
history, beyond reason, and exciting m us a shudder 
like that a silly, superstitious ghi sometimes has in 
passing a graveyard at midnight ; and to think, as we 
have all been thmkmg lately, that we not only have to 
fight a duel with a near relative, but also should be 
drawn, or might possibly be drawn, into any kind of 



4 THE PRESENT EELATIONS BETWEEN 

alliance with those who base their union on this 
devilish doctrine, has been so disgusting and degrading 
a prospect to us, that it has made us all sick to 
loathing. " What a loss ! " said Sk Thomas Phillips 
to me on the day of the news of Prince Albert's death. 
" Can you think much of the death of any one human 
creature, however important, compared with the pros- 
pect of this miserable war?" was my answer. Let 
your newspapers, statesmen, and ambassadors tell you 
what you hke : take from me, an old, dispassionate 
looker-on in politics, the above as almost the most 
undeniable thing (next to a love for oiu' own freedom) 
which can be predicated of Britain and the British. 
As long as you treat us like gentlemen (I think 
Seward's waiting to see what we did, when he thought 
all the while we were right, was more like a law}'er 
than a gentleman), I don't beheve the Emperor of 
the* French himself, with all the cotton-lords (and they 
will be few) he can enlist, wdl persuade us towards 
movmg to break the blockade, even though it be ever 
so paperish a one. So far for politics : now to " pas- 
tm'es new." 

Last summer, we had a lone house for our sketching 
quarters on the Thames, twenty miles below Oxford ; 
a ferry attached to it, which one man w^as obliged to 
work day and night too, if the passengers could wake 
him. I spent many and many a pleasant hour, when 
satm-ated with sketchmg, m sailing my New- York 
centre-board httle boat, the " Yankee " ; the star- 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 5 

spangled banner, of course, in fuU fly at the peak. 
The Great Western Railway crossed the Thames near 
us ; and, quiet as was the land and water, the trains in 
mid air brought thousands of eyes to admire the boat 
and the beautiful flag. What will be the issue of its 
stars from your troubles '? I have said I wdl no more 
politics, or I must have added a word or two why we 
think our old sapng, " Good shut of bad rubbish," 
should be the doctrine of your pohcy, as the best way 
of getting rid of the plague of slave recognition and 
its devotees. 

Pray, remember me, with all kmdness and esteem, 
to Professor Parsons ; also to your family. . . . Now 
that international questions have a lull, is there 
no chance of his commg to perfidious Albion? or 
of yours once more ] Rely on one thing : never 
was there so profound a determination for non- 
intervention and peace in a people as there is now in 
the Enghsh nation, and m those of every shade of 
pohtics^and thought. I wish you coidd lift up voice 
enough to persuade your people to act on this con- 
viction ; and I would come over to Massachusetts, to 
be hung, drawn, and quartered, if the conviction proved 
untrue. 

Yours very truly, 

Edwin W. Field. 

Chajiles G. Loring, Esq., 

Boston, Massachusetts. 



THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 



II. 

Boston, U. S. A. 
My dear Mr. Field, 

I cannot well express to you, without seeming guilty 
of exaggeration, the gratification with which I read 
your letter. I took leave to circulate it among your 
friends here, and others who know you by reputation, 
as it was the first authentic manifestation (exceptmg 
in the speeches of Mr. Bright and the utterances of INIr. 
J. Stuart Mill and of a very few others of your distm- 
guished men) that any considerable number of your 
comitrymen entertained other feelmgs towards us and 
oiu' institutions than those of deep-seated dishke and 
hostility ; and I confess, that it surprises me to learn 
from any source that such may be the fact. 

Your Government hastemng to recognize, at the 
very outbreak of an atrocious rebellion (having no 
other foundation or pretence than resistance to any 
check upon the contmuance and spread of chattel- 
slavery), the rebels as a helUgerent, entitled to the 
sawie consideration as the long-estabhshed and friendly 
Government they were attempting by force of arms to 
subvert; — your press, from the most conservative and 
respectable quarterlies down to the most contemptible 
gazettes, with scarcely one exception, teeming with 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 7 

atrocious libels upon our people, their civilization, prin- 
ciples, powers, motives, and personal attributes, and with 
scandalously false accusations of our Government, and 
attempts to degrade it in the eyes of the civilized world ; 
— the Parliamentary declaration, through one of your 
most distinguished statesmen, that the war, on the part 
of the Government, was one for dominion, and, on the 
part of the rebels, for independence, (a declaration so 
unwarranted and palpably untrue, as for ever hereafter 
to lead us to distrust any statements he may make on 
any political relation between our respective coun- 
tries ;) — the general tone of English society, as made 
known to us by our correspondents and returning 
friends ; — the hot haste in which your Government 
sought to consider as an intended affront what they had 
no reason to believe to be designed for one, without 
waiting an mstant for opportmiity to get at the facts, 
and much less for one for explanation ; — the bully- 
ing attitude assumed towards an old friend, whose 
arms were tied behind him ; — and yoiu* recent vh- 
tual exclusion of our ships-of-war from your ports, as 
if our whole navy were of the same account as the 
two solitary pkates sent out by the rebels, — all these 
things have led us to believe, and the conviction is 
nearly if not quite universal, that we have foes Avhere 
w^e thought we had friends, ,and nothmg to rely upon 
in the friendship, not even in the loilllng neutrality, of 
your country, should her sense of self-interest induce 
her to think a war with us to be profitable.. 

It rejoices my heart to learn, that there are respecta- 



8 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

ble numbers who think and feel differently, and who 
are disposed to recognize the claims of kindred origin, 
literature, religion, and love of freedom ; and I fer- 
vently desire that the wide increase of such sentiments 
may soon become manifest, to heal, at least in some 
measure, the wounds that now rankle deep in the 
hearts of my countrjonen, and, I must sorrowfully add, 
deep in my own. 

The change has been particularly sad to me and my 
friends, who had formed interesting friendships in what 
they loved to look upon as the mother -country. I 
know that I must have loved you, wherever I might 
have met you ; but I doubt not that my friendship for 
you and others Avas heightened by the sentiment that 
we were of one race, and that our comitries, in the 
chief essentials of Chiistian civilization (at least so 
far as New England was concerned), were the same. 
England was to me a hallowed spot ; and I looked for- 
ward to another visit there as among the hopes of the 
future. My whole intercourse with your countrymen 
had led me to believe that there was a cordial good- 
will towards us, which every man should do his utmost 
to cultivate and extend. The consciousness of sup- 
posed superiority, which few of them know how to 
conceal, and many are not aware of as appearing in 
then* manners, sometimes amused, but never offended 
me ; and, until ten months ago, no passport to my 
hospitality, — humble mdeed, but hearty, — and to 
that of my friends generally, was more sure than an 
mtroduction as a gentleman from England. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 9 

This feeling had been of late growing throughout 
our eoimtry with surprising rapichty and strength. It 
was exhibited (I should have thought unmistakably) 
in the universal gratification expressed throughout the 
land in the opportunity to evince our national good- 
will hi the restoration of the Arctic ship the " Reso- 
lute"; m sendmg an expedition in search of Sk John 
Franklin ; m raismg our flags at half-mast when Ha- 
velock fell; in contributions for Ireland; and m the 
reception of your Prmce, which no observer could 
mistake as a popular excitement for a pageant merely, 
mstead of seeing in it the exhibition of a dommo-ht 
hearty good-will to your Queen and people. Had she 
landed on our shores, it would have been more feel- 
ingly demonstrated ; and no monarch, at home, could 
receive an ovation more grateful to a generous and 
noble heart than she woidd have met with here. 

And, had trouble arisen between England and any 
of the great powers of i:nropc, our sympathies, and, if 
needed, I am confident that our aid, woidd have been 
promptly given. I lament to say, but honest truth de- 
mands it, that this is now all reversed. We feel that 
we have, substantially, enemies in those whom we 
accounted fast friends, and towards whom we certamly 
entertained, and had extended the hand of, most cordial 
friendship. I should, if going abroad, avoid England ; 
and many have I heard say the same thing, among 
those who loved her best. Not that I shoidd not most 
heartily rejoice to take you by the hand anywhere 
and everywhere, and others who, I cannot doubt, still 



10 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

judge US and our cause kindly, if not justly : but I 
could not feel at ease among your countrymen with- 
out previous assurance that they were not of the 
majority on this subject ; and a keen sense of national 
WTong would render intercourse with them any thing 
but agreeable to either party. 

It seems strange to us, that England, who has appar- 
ently no friend among European powers, should thus 
wantonly throw away the cordial good-will of a kindi'ed 
nation, that is more able to assist her in an extremity 
than any other, and whose moral support alone, consid- 
ering language, descent, and love of freedom, must be 
worth something, even to her haughty people. But it 
is done ; and fifty years cannot, if time ever can, restore 
what has been thus ruthlessly cast away in a day. 

We all rejoice that the Trent affair was settled with- 
out a war. For us to have entered mto one which 
could be avoided, would, m our circumstances, have 
been madness : though England would not have 
found us so helpless as she imagined ; nor that twen- 
ty millions of people, possessing withm themselves all 
the resources for war and self-support, and animated 
by a bui-ning sense of outrage, and of the design to 
take advantage of theh weakness to crush them, could 
be easily subdued; nor that we were so recreant to 
our Saxon manhood as to yield, while ability to fight 
remamed. A people that can improvise an army of 
six hundred thousand fighting men, well equipped with 
all arms, for the field, in seven months, and every man 
a volunteer, and increase its navy tenfold ; and that 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES, 11 

pour out their money like water in support of the 
Government, and in aid of the families of those who 
go out to defend it, — may be entitled to some respect 
as a military power, at least at home. Nevertheless, 
a war with you might have retarded our extinction 
of the Rebellion, whose neck is now under our feet ; 
though you must pardon me for saying, that I think 
it by no means certain that England would eventually 
have suffered less than the United States. But it 
is not to be inferred, that we are unconscious of the 
humiliation we suffer m this transaction. I am for 
once glad that ingenuity and sophistry can seemingly 
hoodwmk the people of two great countries mto the 
belief, that it was right in your Government to make 
the demands it made, and in the mamier m which 
this was done, and that we could yield to them without 
dishonor; but the thinkmg part of our people look 
much deeper, see through the veil, and feel that nei- 
ther is true. 

Now, my dear friend, you must not infer from this 
frank statement of my own feelmgs, and of those gene- 
rally pervading society here so far as known to me, 
that we are cherishmg, or would have our people cher- 
ish, vindictive passions, which are to be subdued for 
the present only, or until convenient opportunity shall 
arrive for lettmg them loose. Very far from it. We 
are all conscious that it is of the utmost importance to 
our country to remam at peace with yours, not from 
apprehension of your superior force, but from the con- 
viction, that the progress of civilization, and all the 



12 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

great ends of human life, would be sacrificed or 
checked, by a war between us, for an indefinite pe- 
riod ; and that not only a permanent but a most bitter 
hostility would ever after exist on both sides. But 
all I mean to say is, that the conduct of your Govern- 
ment and of your people, as almost universally indi- 
cated by your press and your society, has sadly abated 
the cordial friendship we before felt as a nation ; 
and that a deep sense of injury, the deeper and more 
hard to bear because that injury comes from those 
whom we supposed our warm friends, and to whom 
we had often and very recently extended the hand of 
cordial friendship, has sunk mto our hearts. 
J I trust, however, that this calamity, alike grievous, 

'" as I must think, to both nations, will not estrange 

those of us who have learned to esteem and respect 
each other as personal friends. It surely shall not 
estrange me from those whom I so regard in your 
country, nor diminish by one iota the happiness with 
which I should greet you, or any one whom you might 
give to me the privilege of knowing and receiving as 
your friend. Indeed, it would possibly add to my 
pleasure, in the conviction that something was thus 
done towards a restoration of the kind feelings between 
the two nations which I so earnestly wish to have re- 
tiu'n. 

One word more upon the nature of this conflict, and 
I quit the painful theme. It was, on the part of the 
Free States, a struggle for national life. The National 
Government was rebelled against; its fortresses, ves- 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 13 

sels, arms, and inone};s were secretively or forcibly 
seized by the rebels under various false pretences ; until 
open war was commenced by the attack on Fort Sumter. 
The Government had no alternative but to surrender 
its life, or crush the Rebellion. To have consented 
to the secession of the rebel States would have been to 
surrender its whole vitality. To admit the right of 
secession was to chssolve the Union, — leaving every 
State to go out at pleasure, and reducmg our National 
Government to an empty form. To yield to the demand, 
without admitting the right, would have been to confess 
the inability of the Government to maintain itself. 
There was no alternative but to fight, or abandon all the 
reality of a 7iationcd existence^ all 'power to protect 
ourselves at home or abroad. Beyond this, in the 
futiu'e, with two or twenty, as the case might be, 
different independent sovereignties on this contment, 
no peace, strength, or prosperity could be anticij)ated. 
We should have been perpetually exposed to intestine 
jealousies and broils, and mterventions from abroad, 
involving all the worst calamities of civil and foreign 
conflict, with no settled internal or external policy, 
and with the constant and ever-increasmg destructive 
moral and political influences of sudden, vindictive, 
and desolating wars. 

It is for salvation from these and other unutterable 
woes to ourselves and our childi'en, and for the support 
of the mildest and most equal government the world 
ever saw, that we are fighting, — against the most wan- 
ton and atrocious rebellion (and one avowedly for the 



14 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

maintenance and extension of human slavery) which 
stains the pages of history ; and whatever may be the 
ophiion of England now, and however willmg she 
may be that we should fail, and be broken into bleed- 
ing fragments, rather than stand in the way of her 
prosperity or supremacy, as has been too often and 
generally avowed, such, we believe, is our cause m the 
sight of God, and such will be oiu* record in history. 
Nor can I doubt that many yet wUl mourn the day 
that your comitry, in the hour of our extremity, placed 
herself m the false position of throwmg her moral 
and political influence into the scale of our enemies, 
and this to the support of human slavery. 

I must add, that great as are our embarrassments, and 
fearful as may be the future of privation and sacrifice, 
we rejoice in this war, and would not go back a day in 
its history. It is mfinitely better than the degradation 
and depravity mto which our Government had fallen 
m the hands of the slcweocracy, which had obtained 
almost unlimited control of it, and which seemed fast 
bm'ying all sense of national honor and self-respect in 
a gulf of corruption for the support and extension of 
slavery. We had begun to despah of the Republic, in 
the fear that there was no loyalty in the people, and 
no hope of escape from the cods of the serpent 
which had been so long and successfully twining itself 
around us. But the first gun at Fort Sumter broke 
the spell ; and we in the Free States now exult in the 
consciousness of a deep, fervent, and universal patri- 
otism, and spirit of self-sacrifice (which have raised the 



■ GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 15 

people to a noble sense of their wrongs and of their 
duty ; prQinpting them, one and all, to take the field, 
and expend their means at their country s call, without 
counting the cost in life or wealth), and in the belief 
that we have now inaugurated a spirit of American 
loijaUij, which, though wantmg the advantage of a 
personal object as in your country, will give to our 
own love of country a moral and political elevation 
and strcno-th to which it never otherwise could have 
attained. 

And pardon me for adding, as another blessing 
already realized, the destruction of that morbid sensi- 
tiveness to English opinion, censure, and ridicule, as 
uttered by your press, which has hitherto so tended 
to diminish our self-respect and the respect of others 
for us. This sensitiveness was fomided on our love 
for England and her institutions, and on our pride as 
her descendants. It will never agam trouble us. 

The general unfriendliness of your public speakers, 
and quarterlies and magazines and gazettes, in all that 
relates to us; the bitter hostility and cruel and un- 
justifiable taunts and accusations with which many of 
them have abounded ; and the general tone of English 
society, as testified to by ovu' friends there, — have 
taught us to estimate j)uhllG opinion in England m 
such a manner, that it can have little influence upon 
us hereafter in any matter relating to ourselves. 

Excuse me, my friend, for this long, and, I fear, very 
tedious tax upon your patience, and perhaps, in some 
things I have said, a still greater one upon your in- 



16 THE PRESENT EELATIONS BETWEEN 

dulgence. But it is, as' you may well believe, the 
dearest of subjects to an American heart ; and I am 
solicitous that you and our friends in England may 
l^ettcr understand us and our feehngs upon this topic, 
than, as far as we can know your opinions and senti- 
ments, you seem to do. And you AviU excuse, I trust, 
any seemingly undue warmth or any misapprehension 
with regard to them. 

I conclude my letter, my friend, with a renewal of 
the most cordial invitation to you and yours, and any 
whom you may see fit to introduce, to visit us. Do not 
doubt the heartiest of welcomes. Had war broken 
out between our respective countries, I must have 
abandoned my summer home, as it is below all forti- 
fied points on the borders of the sea, and accessible to 
a boat's crew. I am looking forward with impatience, 
as I do every year, to return to its refreshing and 
soothing influences ; which will be doubly great, if, as 
I hope, this atrocious Rebellion shall by that time be 
essentially subdued. When its history shall be writ- 
ten, humanity will blush at the falsehoods, barbarities, 
and infernal cruelties of the rebels in the conduct of 
the war ; and none will be ready to acknowledge that 
he ever wished them success. 

Ever faithfuUy yours, 

Charles G. Loring. 

Edwin W. Field, Esq., London. 

P. S. — I omitted to notice a pretence constantly put 
forth by the rebel emissaries in England, that the 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 17 

Rebellion was in part to protect the South from oppres- 
sive tariffs. Every American, North or South, who 
knows any thmg, knows this to be a deliberate falsehood. 
It is so far from being true, that, if you search the 
records of Congress during the agitation of the ques- 
tions at issue between the North and the South just 
before the war broke out and when all the subjects of 
complaint and compromise were discussed, and the 
records of the Peace Congress assembled from the 
Slave States and the Free States ostensibly to ascertain 
if a friendly adjustment could be made, you will find 
that there was no allusion to any such subject as 
requirmg adjustment, and that the proposals and dis- 
cussions related enthely and exclusively to slavery, 
and to the claims made by the South for its protection 
and extension. 



18 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 



III. 



Niton, Isle of Wigut, 6th April, 1862. 
Posted London, 11th April, 1862. 

My dear Friend, 

I am at the seaside for a week or two, trying to 
patch up a vessel now fast growing old and leaky ; 
and your letter has followed me here, and so finds me 
with time to inflict a long answer. A short one would 
be no answer at all. The answer should be by another 
hand ; for I am no statesman : and yoiu's on the subject 
of Perfidious Albion comes, and evidently, from one of 
the Patres Conscripti. I have no clerk here ; and, by 
the time I have got over a page or two, shall have 
lapsed into such a scrawl, as to give, I fear, your 
excellent secretary (to whom my best thanks) the job 
of transcribing this reply, as well as the mdictment you 
sent me : indictment, indeed, and speech for the prose- 
cution, full of eloquence, — both in one. 

Yom's is not the first Transatlantic bill of complaint 

which has reached me. , who is over here 

from your Government about submarine-telegraph 
matters, brought me the other day a letter from my 

old friend, his brother, , full of 

astonishment and queries about the state of irritation, 
imagined to exist here, against the Northern States. 
He wanted to know what an old over-mature law-fogie 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 19 

like me would say about the furor supposed to be 
raging among the pohticians. Was it cotton? was it 
tariff? was it the blockade ? and so on and so on. How 
was it that we did not sympathize with the victims of 
" the most gigantic rebellion the world ever saw " ? 

My answer was much like what I had written you 
a month or so before. It was, that we had learned 
from you^ and thoroughly believed in the truth of the 
lesson you had taught us, viz., that " gigantic rebellion " 
was a contradiction in terms ; — that, loathmg the men 
at their head, still we could not look at the South as 
rebels; — that we thought the feud arose from the inevi- 
table laws of nature ; — that there were, and long had 
been (if not always), vital, fundamental differences 
between you and them, which must sooner or later 
come to a death-struggle between you; but that we 
did, one and all of us, think that their leaders, your 
late governors, were about the greatest swindlers and 
\illams unhung upon the earth ; — that it was not a 
question of the extent of " Union sentiment South," 
but " Do not the mass there believe in the riijht divine 
of niggerdom ? " (or nigger doom, I shoidd call it ;) if 
so, there can he no Union sentiment, in the true sense 
of the w^ord ; for you might as well try to mix oil and 
water as to try to go on with them, you recognizing 
then* Devil's principle in your new partnership ; — and 
that our puzzle, ay, and our disgust too, was, that you 
were not anxious to let them have Pandemonium to 
themselves. How under the sun you Northern free- 
men should not jump at the chance of gettmg rid of 



20 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

them, and of the responsibility of the slave question, 
we can't divine. Swindled and robbed as you have 
been, and insulted afterwards, that you should fight 
them, thrash them, kick them, flay them alive, — any 
thing prompted by a just indignation, — seemed and 
seems to us natural enough (more natural than truly 
wise and philosophical, of course : but pass that by ; it 
is in human nature) ; but to fight and thrash, not to 
punish robbers, and make convicts of them, but deli- 
berately as a means to make them your partners and 
co-equals agam, is to us utterly incomprehensible. To 
fight, and also to avow you fight (but then loud avowal 
is of the essence of the act), in order to narrow theh 
bomidaries ; to cut them ofi" from the Territories ; to 
reclaim as much of the Border States as possible from 
the dommion of the Devil ; to secure the Mississippi ; 
and to insure more triumphant terms of separation, — 
Avould be at once to have not only England, but all 
Europe, throw up theh hats for you. But to avow you 
fight only to put down a rebellion, is to assert that the 
quarrel is purely a matter of personal, indi\ddual, tem- 
porary dissatisfaction, and to continue to admit, that 
there is nothing m your North and South elemental 
prmciples of policy to prevent your re-union. If you 
(by " YOU," mind, I always mean your Government, and 
something that is on the record; because your abolition- 
ists and anti-abolitionists are always asserting totally 
antagonistic things as the operating national objects) — 
if you say, " We fight to maintam the Constitution," 
England and all Europe (for we and Europe have been 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 21 

entii-ely at one in all this matter ; and you really must 
cut Eiu'ope, if we ought to be cut for our honest con- 
victions on it) wUl answer, " Those old wise articles of 
partnership you call your Constitution, were, after all, 
' made with hands ' ; and it is idolatry to worship them 
as of the Eternal. Forms of government, like forms 
of behef, vary, and are meant to vary, between people 
and people, and from age to age ; but right and wrong 
(say the toleration, even within your partnership lim- 
its, of niggerdom) are of the Heavens and Eternal." 
To have the sympathy of Europe, you must say that 
" These men are (not rebels, but) enemies, whom we 
will fight to the death and a outrance ; and whom, 
till they renoimce and from their hearts disclaim then- 
De\il's doctrine of the right di\ine of White sovereign- 
ty, we will, no, never, take to be the .partners of our 
bosoms again." 

If you say, — though you (United States) have not 
said it yet, — "We will conquer these traitors, and will 
hold them m subjection," we should sympathize to 
some extent. But we should say, and in true regard 
for you, " For goodness' sake, mind what you do. You 
will bm-n your fingers. We know that with Ireland, 
where we have been four hundi-ed years trying to get 
straight again, and, till within the last thu-ty years, 
have made but little real progress ; and with India, 
that most perplexing of problems. Once begin and 
try, and immediately rights of property, and the like, 
arise under your guaranty ; and you can't back out 
agam at any price. The fix the French are in, by 



22 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

their occupation of Eome, is an instance, in a small 
way, of the growth of perplexities which would come 
on you free Northern men by occupation of the 
South." 

" Oh," say you, " listen to perfidious Albion ! You 
Enghsh want us to break up, that we may be a smaller 
people, and less in your way." AVhat a pity it is, my 
dear friend, that when a most honest, disinterested, 
but to passion (to a noble passion, I will allow) an 
unpalatable advice is given, by man to man, or nation 
to nation, a contemptible, villanous motive is at once 
imputed to the giver ! The other day, it was Cotton 
actuated us ; then Tariff ; then Blockade ; and, as 
I told you you would, you have now found these 
imputations were utterly untrue. Towards us they 
were most insulting, and worse than untrue : for, 
if we had not been loyal to you, they (the motives 
pointed at) would have become tempters to us ; and 
we have not allowed them to become so. We have 
had no kind of soothmg speech made from the States 
yet, of regret for havmg dashed all these insults in 
our teeth. We know the state of excitement you 
are all in ; and we do not complain, and have not 
vexed ourselves, about that. But now comes the new 
count agamst your perfidious mother. " You " (says 
United States) " advise us not to make new terms with 
the Devil, because then the States of Pandemonium will 
no longer be part of the United States, and wc should 
be a weaker antagonist to you." — "A house divided 
against itself," &c. (for, united with the South, divided 



GEEAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 23 

you more or less must be) ; I might preach on that 
text, and a true sermon too ; but I will not. I have a 
better answer. It is this : All the world know^s, and 
surely you all know, that if Canada were to say to us 
to-morrow, m earnest, " We want to cut our connection 
with you,. and join the States," our answer would be, 
" Go, and God speed ! " And yet w^ould not you be big 
enough then (however big be the Southern slice you 
cut off to throw into the Devil's jaws) to frighten 
any people to whom an agglomeration of acres in one 
government is a bugbear? My own personal belief 
is, that you would be a greater people, and a greater 
stay for freedom all the world over, if you were a 
nation less m bodily girth, and therefore less a nation 
of necessary com2Womise. I believe that different cli- 
mates and zones, and different natural productions, 
{naturally and by the divine appouitment,) lead to 
different policies and objects, and therefore to the msti- 
tution of different governments and nations. I there- 
fore deske to avow, that I, for one, devoutly hope, not 
in the interest of England^ hut of humanity^ that such 
may be the tendency of your civil war. I am no 
statesman, and I may be wrong in these views. You 

mention with approbation. From all I 

know of his thoughts (and I have studied with pro- 
found approbation his writings, and, to some extent, 
his sayings, suice I fu'st met him, now more than forty 
years ago, at Mr. Bentham's house, in the Class of 
his reprobates, as Bentham called them, which met 
there), I believe he would mdorse these views. I 



24 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

think that ahnost all political economists would agree 
in them. 

Through the effects of oiu- long Anti-com-law agita- 
tion, we, as a nation, are very much more thoroughly 
impregnated with certam doctrmes of pohtical economy 
than you are. Our national creed differs from yours 
on economical pomts, which we (wrongly perhaps) 
deem vital to national welfare. For instance, if we 
admitted protective laws to be right, we should adopt 
the acre-agglomeration idea, and wish all the world 
to be one nation. 

Moreover, we are so small in our acreage, that doubt- 
less we get to fancy acres have less to do with the 
greatness of a people than they really have ; while no 
doubt there must be with you, in the nature of things, 
a tendency to exaggerate in the other dkection. 

Then, again, we here really believe, as a practical 
and dominant national faith and policy (though we 
launch a great deal of humbug and Bunkum-speech, 
generally of a religious kmd, to the contrary), in 
what, as amongst human beings, I think some one 
on your side of the water has called the individualism 
of the individual : viz., that differences, among na- 
tions, of creeds, of state-organizations, of political 
principles, make the world not only more active, but 
wider and freer; that freedom caimot exist without 
these differences ; that the world is far better off for 
being divided into a lot of nations, than if all were fused 
into one ; that, for the advantage of mankind, different 
objects of national policy and national pride (many very 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 25 

false, all imperfect) must and ought to arise amongst 
men, and must and ought to be allowed to split them 
up into different nations and concerns. And we in 
England, to an extent you in America cannot realize, 
do now profoundly believe in the value of competition, 

— of national competition as well as that of traders. 

I beheve it to be quite true, that all England — 
certamly all your best friends here — would wish to 
see you clear of the South. But don't lay these 
honest and lovmg wishes to the low motives your 
letter implies. 

The fierceness of feeUng on your side the sea to- 
wards us, and the absolute absence of any counterpart 
feelmg here, is very remarkable. You, an old, wise, 
quiet man of the world, would be free from this fierce- 
ness if any one could be ; but it absolutely tingles and 
throbs in every syllable of your letter. " Goodness !" 
said my eldest daughter on readmg it, " what can we 
Enghsh have done \ Why, the letter is hissing hot!'' 

was very much struck witn this absence 

here of echo, or polarity, or correspondency, or mduc- 
tion, or whatever I shall call it. He had expected 
to find us also at blood-heat, if not at boilmg-heat ; 
and he said he was most anxious to be able to return 
at once, only to tell all his people that he had been 
day and night amongst all sorts of men, — Govern- 
ment men, members of Parliament, merchants, lawyers, 
— had seen everybody, or a good sample of everybody, 
and had not once heard, no, not one single unkind 
word expressed, or thought indicated, towards America 

4 



26 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

since he had landed. Never were half a dozen pahs 
of eyes opened wider than when he told our chcle, 
that neither his wife nor daughters had come with him 
to England because of the state of our minds, and the 
course of our conduct and thoughts here, towards 
America. However, we may both of us rest safely, I 
hope, for the present, on the truth of the old proverb, 
" It takes two to make a quarrel." 

Newspapers, gazettes, &c., &c., — two old lawyers, 
like you and me, surely need not waste w^ords about 
them. If you think otherwise, and will send me over 
a file of the " New- York Herald," indorsed as ad- 
mitted proofs to be read on the trial, as against 
America, ad lib., then I must needs do scavengers 
work among our papers. Why, clever bitternesses 
and artificial thunder are their stock in trade. The 

Lord Chancellor ( , I think it was) sent me, 

years ago, with a message to , about 

some court arrangements which he, as Vice-Chan- 
cellor, was supposed to have made. " What could 
make the Lord Chancellor think I had settled so and 
so?" said his Honor. "I suppose it was because he 
saw it in the newspapers," I answered. " Nobody liv- 
ing could know better than the Lord Chancellor, that, 
if it was in the newspapers, it w^as siu'e to be a lie," 
was his Honor's reply. AUow what you please for the 
caricature, still a caricature has its basis of truth. 

The " Trent " affak too — we surely need not have 
that miserable affair over again ; beyond this, that we 
two old lawyers know that the parties to any strife 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 27 

can't form a fair judgment themselves ; and that Eu- 
rope, if it may be held neutral, has decided m our 
favor; and that, after Mr. Seward has put an admis- 
sion for U. S. on the record, it can hardly be right to 
argue further. If he meant, " I think you are wrong 
in England all the while, but it is not worth our while, 
now our hands are tied, to question your claim," he 
should have said so distinctly. If he did not say so, 
but sometliing to the contrary, such men as LoweU 
should not, if they are wise, write, — 

*' The lion's paw is all the law, 
According to J. B." 

As I told I will repeat to you : 

" There is, it is true, a strong feeling here, that 
your statesmen, by tradition, don't behave to us as 
if they were gentlemen." I dare say you will not 
deny this to be true as regards your Government be- 
fore the present. But, as to Seward and this " Trent " 
business, there is also a strong feeling here that the old 
tradition is still mtended to prevail. If he felt as he 
says he did, why not instantly disclaim WeUes and the 
other approvers of the act ? Why, by silence at least, 
encoiu'age all the lawyers, &c., m yom- comitry, down 
to yourself even, to compose arguments the other way ■? 
Why lock up the two knaves who, he admits now, were 
still under our flag, and keep them till demand made ? 
It was more like a low attorney, than a gentleman, to 
whisper to his client the President and United States, 
"We are in the wrong: it is trespass. But let us 



28 THE PEESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

wait, and see if England issues a writ." Our people 
here add to that speech, " We have bullied her often 
before without resistance : let us try it on again till 

she complams." As I told so I do you : 

" You will never believe it. It looks too small a mat- 
ter, and is too much under your very nose, to be seen. 
But nine-tenths of every cUfficulty between you and us 
arises from the feelmg here that your Government does 
not mean to behave like gentlemen to England." 

Now I come to the very important point on which 
you and I differ. How, in the interest of humanity 
and human progress and freedom, ought neutrals to 
behave towards rebels and towards the parent State ? 
This is an all-important question for liberty, and for 
those who are under oppression. It is one at our doors 
here, — we bemg the one free, or the one of two 
free nations of Em'opc, and having tyrant neighbors 
enough, and nationalities enough oppressed and ty- 
ramiized over, at oiu- ears almost. 1st, We must, to 
have a chance of remaining neutral, rigidly follow, in 
all cases, the same rules. 2d, As the rebels are right, 
and deserve all sympathy from us, in thirty-nme cases 
out of forty, we must try to have these rules as advan- 
tageous towards the minorities in rebellion as we can. 
Add to this, that God has put mto the hearts of every 
one of us, for a good end obvious enough, a leaning 
to take the side of the weaker party, without suffi- 
cient reference to the merits of the quarrel. If you see 
a bigger boy tlirashmg a smaller one, you can't help 
such a feeling ; though, likely enough, the small rascal 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 29 

deserves twice what he will get. I can't deny, that, 
hecause of you (United States) not having put your 
ultimate objects of war on the record, there is a feel- 
ing here that you are, to a considerable extent, as yet 
fighting because you have been infamously treated, — 
for honor, that is, as in a duel. Now, I mean to affirm, 
that with these considerations before us, and with full 
knowledge, that, whatever course we took towards you, 
Europe would ever hereafter hold us to, in favor of the 
dominant authority and against the calcitrant mmo- 
rities, we have swerved from our true Ime of dutj^ 
towards rebels, and towards the freedom so often on 
this hemisphere to be w^on only by rebellion, by 
leanmgs towards the North in your struggle. I allude 
to sellmg you arms, &c., after your blockade ; to 
acknowledgmg yoiu* blockade before it was really 
effectively formed (loyally, as I have said before, and 
with starvation staring Lancashhe m the face) ; and to 
allowing your ships-of-war to come into our ports for 
supplies, &c., without question, and continumg to 
allow them, till the " Sumter " came and made it clear 
we could not do so longer without settmg up a prece- 
dent mischievous ever after. On this subject, I will 
only add, " For goodness' sake, remember that mtcr- 
national law is made up solely by precedents ; and that 
Liberty herself calls on you and us, above all other 
nations, to set up and stick to such precedents as in 
the coui'se of ages (and not for one time only) are 
most advantageous to her." 

Another way I would put all this matter. To me 



30 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

it is conclusive. Suppose the Southern plotters had 
contrived to keep the ascendency; to spread slave 
States faster than you North States could free ; and 
gradually to have encompassed you and overwhelmed 
you with theh toils : ought not you to have rebelled, 
seceded, or call it what you please 1 You cannot say 
No : if you could, I woidd beseech you, by all that 
is to be valued, not to tell us so. You must have risen 
to a man, and fought as the South are fighting, but in 
a righteous cause, instead of a Devil's cause. AVhere 
would Lothrop Motley's arguments have been then? 
W'hat their value? AVhat course would you have 
expected from England then on the points you feel 
aggrieved about? 

On the whole, when you can all come back to a state 
of mmd allowing you to consider the matter impartial- 
ly, you will, I feel confident, agree that it never does 
answer, in the long run, not to give even the Devil his 
due. On the contrary, if you know it is the Devil you 
have to do justice to, you must lean more strongly 
towards him, for fear your loathmgs should make you 
give him less than is his real title. 

Another test for you. You can rarely find a guilty 
man without some lui'king consciousness of his guilt. 
Most unquestionably we, one and all of us, here, 
believe we have been thoroughly without double- 
dealmgs or impropriety towards you. We believe not 
only the truth of the negative plea, " Not guilty," but 
we affirm ourselves entitled to the credit of unflinching 
loyalty under chcumstances aheady involving us in 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 31 

appalling trials. What is to happen to Lancashii-e, 
and, through its sides, to all our poor, I do not know ; 
but this I do know, that we shall bear any evils of that 
sort, and almost any injustice of charges from you, 
before we shall ever enter mto any fightmg aUiance 
with nigger-drivers. 

Do, for the sake of the old Saxon blood in all our 
veins, have a httle faith, and a little, little, charity, if 
your excitement, as is probable enough, will not let 
you be thoroughly just. 

Here ends my long treatise. I have noticed nothing 
you say about your large army, and its being all 
volunteer in its attractive basis ; nor any of the other 
signs of your gigantic power and will, to which you 
allude : because I have devoted all, and more than all, 
the patience you will be able to give me, to prmciples ; 
and principles are greater than armies or continents. 
It is a great satisfaction to find you have broken your 
life-long resolution, and gone into your Legislature. 
The careful avoidance of political life hitherto prac- 
tised so generally by the practical, educated, conserva- 
tive gentlemen of your country, is surely an alarmmg 
sign of the tendency of universal suffrage. I (who 
was born a radical, of an old radical breed, and have 
lived one to an age now advancmg) have always 
thought it of grave signification. I am sure, that, 
more than any thing else, the observations we have 
made of it have put an end, for many years to come, to 
the Reform-bill changes which had been, for some year's 
past, maturmg here. J. S. Mill's book on Hepresenta- 



32 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

tive Government, I dare say, you have seen. You 
will see marks of American influences throughout it, 
moderating his older views. 

Your account of your son, your cousins, and your 
family changes because of the war, are full of interest. 
That they will all, and that the war also will, be of 
the highest value in the results upon character, I do 
not doubt ; but that the war will long continue to be 
carried on merely to negative the right of secession, 
I cannot believe, and do devoutly hope will not be the 
case. We here are at least lookers-on, and impartial 
on that point ; and, with every leaning on every other 
point towards the North, we say, from the bottom of 
our convictions, " To fight merely for that, is, at the 
mildest, a lamentable mistake." 

Your letter shall go to the Judges you name, and to 

Mr. also, at whose house, you remember, 

we dined together. If my answer had been of any 
moderate length, and my handwriting legible, I would 

have sent this letter also, in the hope 

that he might have added a line at the foot of it, say- 
ing (as I don't doubt he and every other experienced 
and impartial lawyer, and man of the world, among us 
would say) that I have not untruly, on the whole, 
represented English thoughts and feelings. 

Don't let any names be used which ought not. 
Subject to that restriction, make any use of this letter 
you please, if of use it be capable ; and believe me 

always most sincerely yours. 

Edwin W. Field. 
Hon. Charles G. Loring, Esq., Boston, U. S. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 



IV. 

Boston, June 23, 1862. 
My dear Friend, 

I should have rephed long ago to your certamly 
very clever answer to what you term my " mdictmcnt, 
and speech for the prosecution, both in one," but from 
an unavoidable pressure of other engagements when 
it was received, and a personal disaster following, 
which came exceedingly near to relieving you from 
ever hearing from me again, and from which I. have 
not yet recovered. Indeed, this is the thhd or fourth 
time I have essayed to write ; but my bram soon re- 
fused its office, and compelled me to desist. 

Your letter was to us particularly interestmg, as 
presentmg a view so enthely English, of the strug- 
gle in which we are engaged, and thus accounting, 
in some measure, for the general sympathy of your 
countrymen, or one class of them, with the cause of 
the rebels ; which is to us an occasion of so much 
wonder and mmgled disappomtment and grief. You 
must allow me, however, to say (in the frankness which 
I am pleased to see that you accord with me in desh- 
ing should characterize this correspondence), that, in 
technical phrase, it would be bad upon demm-rer, as 
not responsive to the charges m the bill. I, of course, 
do not attribute this to any deske on your part to 



34 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

evade them : it is quite satisfactorily accounted for by 
the different stand-pomts from which we view the sub- 
ject ; and by the cu'cumstance, that you look upon it as 
a mere matter of philosophical or political speculation, 
while to me it has an mterest nothing less than that 
of national life or death, and of the final solution of the 
question of the possibility of free government, founded 
upon the^ equality of the natural rights of man, — or, 
if not final, at least for the next century or longer. 

If you will recur to my letter, you will perceive that I 
did not complain because your countrymen entertained 
the opinion, that it was best for the Free States to 
be separated from the Southern, as a speculative opin- 
ion, founded upon any of the political, moral, or philo- 
sophical grounds, or principles of ethics, or of states- 
manship, which are so ably set forth in your letter, and 
upon which alone I have no doubt that you, and many 
like you, deske that the separation may take place. I 
did not complam of this, though it is obviously the 
same thing in substance as desmng the success of the 
rebels m the contest ; for, as things are, the end desked 
— the separation — can by no possibility be otherwise 
accomplished. Nor did I complam because of any 
professed neutrality of your people towards the two 
contending parties : though candor compels me to say, 
that, in view of the nature and avowed causes of the 
Hebellion, of the manner in which it has been con- 
ducted, and of the real issues which every reflecting 
man, who will consider the subject, must see to be ui- 
volved in regard to the maintenance of established 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 35 

government and law, such opinions and such neidraUty 
of feeling are to us somewhat marvellous, — mdeed, to 
one understanding the realities of the case, enthely 
incomprehensible. We cannot but feel, that an honest 
man, beset in his own house by thieves and assassins, 
might, without the imputation of great want of magna- 
nimity or good temper, consider that he had cause for 
subsequent alienation, at the least, from a neighbor or 
friend, who, standing by during the struggle, should 
l^rofess entire neutrality of feeling in such a matter, or 
indifference as to which party should prevail ; or who 
should express at the moment active sympathy for the 
assailants, and wish them success, on the assumed 
ground, that greater good would probably rcsidt, even 
to the party attacked, from his being obliged to sur- 
render his property, than from his being permitted to 
retain it, — however honest such assumption might be. 
But my complaint was, that the general tone of feel- 
ing and sentiment of the British people towards the 
Government and people of the United States was one 
of bitter hostility and of avowed scorn and contempt, 
evidencmg that the general desire on then- part for 
the breaking-up of our Union (which deske you ad- 
mit to be generally prevalent) was not founded on the 
prmciples and opinions which influence you, and per- 
haps many who think with you, but upon animosity arid 
hatred, distrust and contempt, wholly unexpected by 
us, and, as we think, wholly unwarranted by the recent 
intercourse between the two nations, and at variance 
with the friendship exhibited by our countrymen to- 



36 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

wards yours. As evidence of this, I alluded to the 
almost universal utterances of your press, m its periodi- 
cal literature as well as in its daily gazettes, from the 
aristocratic quarterlies down to the most vulgar and 
radical of its issues, teeming with misrepresentations of 
our people and their institutions and conduct, exulting 
in our disasters, depreciating our successes and re- 
sources, and filled with raven prophecies of our future ; 
— to the unfriendly feelings manifested m public and 
in society towards us and our cause, which drive loyal 
Americans from England ; — and to the favor shoAvn 
to the rebels and theh emissaries throughout your 
land. This has been strikmgly exhibited m the cordial 
reception given to the rebel picaroons and their offi- 
cers in your ports m England and in the Colonies; 
and in the strongly contrasted coldness, if not insult, 
manifested towards our national vessels and their offi- 
cers. 

Nor did I complam of the alleged neutrality of your 
Government, which you seem to think so clear, and so 
honorable to it under the temptations to which it was 
exposed. My complaint was, that your Government 
was not justly neutral, and not so considerate as 
a friendly Government should have been towards 
an ancient friend and neighbor threatened with what 
seemed at least sudden and enthe overthrow and 
destruction, and so threatened not by a people seeking 
escape from an intolerable tyranny, but by a band 
of conspirators seeking avowedly the extension and 
perpetuation of slavery. I complained that your 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 6i 

GoYeYnment jorecijufatehj hastened to acknowledge the 
rebels as a belligerent i:)ower, and thus to give to 
them, for all the puqDOses of war, full standing as one 
of the established nations, before any time could have 
elapsed for determining whether there was a proba- 
bility that they could sustain themselves in the outset 
of their enterprise. The Queen's proclamation was 
issued, if I mistake not, within a fortnight or three 
weeks after your first reception of the news that the 
rebels had actually commenced war, and while Mr. 
Adams, the first minister from Mr. Lincoln's admini- 
stration, was yet on his passage to England; con- 
sequently, before it was possible to know the views 
of our Government through its accredited agent (a 
most marked and significant discourtesy) ; — before 
it was possible to know whether the rebels could or 
could not sustain themselves, even on the first spot 
where they had instituted the conflict ; — and long be- 
fore they could have (or there was reason to believe 
that they could, if ever, have) a single ship of war 
upon the ocean to present the only kind of case in 
which the principle, thus eagerly annunciated, could 
be applied. This at once neutralized, as your states- 
men must have known that it would, and must there- 
fore be supposed to have intended that it shoidd, the 
otherwise great and righteous power we possessed 
of treating them, according to our own express sta- 
tutes, as rebels and pirates ; and, without this early 
recognition of belligerent right, they would never 
have dared to set an armed vessel afloat. That ac- 



38 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

knowledgment was rightly considered by the Slave 
States as the first great step, and indeed the utmost 
that could then he taken by your Government, towards 
the acknowledgment of their independence, which 
they have ever since so confidently relied upon. The 
encouragement this gave has been their chief support ; 
and, without it, the contest, as we believe, would have 
been of comparatively short duration. 

I complained, too, that this want of real neutrality, 
or rather this real, not to say avowed, sympathy of 
your Government with the rebels, was further mani- 
fested by the declaration of Earl E-ussell, its mouth- 
piece, (and very recently reiterated in substance by 
Mr. Gladstone in Parliament,) that the contest here 
is one " for empire on the part of the Norths and for 
independence on the part of the South ; " to us a mis- 
representation so palpable, that Ave can no otherwise 
account for it but upon the belief of ill-concealed 
enmity, or not less unpardonable voluntary blindness. 
To say, that a National Government, of the mildest 
and most paternal character that ever existed (which 
the rebels themselves, up to the time of their re- 
volt, had enthely controlled, and boasted of control- 
ling, and whose constitution and laws had by them 
been directed, not to say perverted, to the almost 
exclusive protection of their peculiar interests, and 
which they rebelled against for the openly avowed 
and exclusive purpose of extending and perpetuating 
negro-chattel slavery, and because their political ascen- 
dency, in its periodical administration, was partially 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 39 

reduced), is figlithuj for empire^ when attempting to 
subdue such atrocious conspiracy and treason against 
government, law, and humanity ; and to say, that con- 
spirators, fighting, and seducing, by systematic false- 
hood, deluded, ignorant masses of people to fight with 
them, for the sake of extending and perpetuating a 
despotism of slavery, are contending for independence ; 
— and thus to attribute to the Free States a base or 
unjustifiable love of power, and a desire injuriously to 
extend empire over unwilling subjects ; and to charac- 
terize the Slave States as a people merely struggling for 
freedom, and escape from oppression, (for such is the 
obvious and unquestionable import and influence of the 
declaration,) — is a perversion of truth, so glaring, 
that, if it be not conclusive of strong hostility, it is at 
least evidence of a willingness to be deceived, fallmg lit- 
tle if any thing short of it ; while the senile declaration 
of Lord Brougham, which just reaches us, that our 
" whole people are frantic with mutual hatred, filled 
with a thirst of vengeance only to he slaked by each 
other's slaughter" and his commentary upon " the ten- 
dency of aristocracies to preserve peace^ and the un- 
bounded calamities overwhelming the State bent under 
the yoke of the midtitude" are equally noticeable, as 
portraying the pitiable ignorance, or something worse, 
of the leaders of your aristocracy, in regard to 
a great people struggling to save itself from degra- 
dation and ruin, and to rescue the cause of gov- 
ernment, liberty, and humanity, from an overthrow, 
of which the consequences would be felt for ages 



40 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

throughout the cdvihzed world. You know, and all 
well-informed Englishmen ought to know, that the 
people of the Free States, so far from hemg " fran- 
tic with hatred, and filled with a thkst of ven- 
geance only to be slaked by slaughter," have been 
almost unaccountably calm, unimpassioned, and mild 
in the conduct of the war. There may be frenzy and 
" hatred " enough on the part of the South, stimu- 
lated as it is by the industrious lies of its leaders. 
There are no such feelings in the North. This is so 
manifest, as everywhere to cause surprise ; and was 
noticed by Mr. Hussell, no great friend of this coun- 
try. 

Our people have moved in this matter with no 
appearance of popular rage, and with no excitement 
other than that of fu'm resolution and an unflinching 
purpose to put down the Rebellion at all hazards. 
The rebels, indeed, have exhibited that frantic rage, 
and " thirst for vengeance," which is not satisfied even 
with the death of its victims ; and, in very many 
instances, they have exhibited themselves in scarcely a 
better light than that of camiibals, — the natural fruit 
of slavery, of which I send you evidence. But no 
such feeling has been shown by the people of the 
Free States, nor have their soldiers been guilty of any 
conduct justifying the imputation of inhumanity in 
the carrying-on of the war. Individual instances of 
depredations, promptly suppressed and punished, are 
the most that can be found to be justly complained 
of in the conduct of our troops. See the contrast in 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 41 

our sending boats to save the drowning rebels, 
who had left their sinking gunboat off Memphis ; 
and in their soon afterwards, in another engagement, 
firing grape and canister upon our scalded men (who 
had jumped overboard from one of our vessels whose 
steam-boiler had been pierced), and upon our boats 
sent to their rescue, so long as one remained above 
water. 

Nor was my complaint, about the Trent affair, that 
your Government, under its alleged construction of 
the law of nations, claimed the restitution of traitors, 
who, under your flag, were bent upon the destruc- 
tion of their own ; though I must be permitted to say, 
that in view of its past history, and especially in 
relation to this country, and of the causes that led to 
the war between us in 1812, it seemed, and still 
seems, a very marvellous conversion to a faith not 
before practised upon, if professed, — were it not that 
circumstances must always be allowed to alter cases ; 
and those of Bullum vs. Boatum, and Boatum vs. 
Bullum, although founded upon facts identical, always 
from the beginning of time have been, and to its end 
probably will be, essentially different in the eyes of the 
different parties. (But more of this presently. I have 
a word to say about the comparatively " gentlemanly " 
course of the two Governments on the subject, about 
which we differ quite as essentially as on some other 
points.) But what I did complain of, and adduce as 
evidence of settled hostility, anxious to seek occasion 
for offence, and opportunity of deadly injury, was 



42 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

the eagerness with which your people, goading on your 
Government (which, if it had happened here, my Lord 
Brougham would doubtless have grieved over as the 
" tendency of democratic rule," needing the control of 
an aristocracy), upon the first suggestion of a pretence 
for war, or imagination of intended insult, — without 
waiting a moment for opportunity of explanation, dis- 
avowal, or apology, — with a seemmg " frantic " rage, 
rushed to arms to hurl upon us a sudden conflict, 
which, they could not but believe, would, in our 
crippled and apparently helpless condition, crush 
us for ever to the earth. I think that this conduct 
has sunk more deeply into our hearts than all the 
rest, — the apparently crowning proof of that total 
want of friendship, or rather of that hostility, towards 
us in the hour of our extremity, and that desire for 
the destruction of our national existence, which seem 
in all else so manifest. Nor will it, as we believe, 
stand in history as more creditable to the courage and 
magnanimity of the British nation, than to her asserted 
neutrality in this contest. 

These, my dear friend, are the grievances com- 
plained of in my letter ; and I do not perceive that 
you have undertaken to deny them or to answer them, 
otherwise than by a very able and elaborate assignment 
of other reasons than those of hostility, jealousy, or 
unfriendly feelings, for the desire (which you admit to 
be entertained by all, or nearly all, of your country- 
men) of a separation of the Free from the Slave States, 
and a consequent want of sympathy vA\\\ the former in 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 43 

this struggle : which desii-e is evidently the same thing 
as a desire for the destruction of our existing: nation- 
ality, and the subversion of our Government ; for by 
no possibility can separation otherwise be accomplished 
or exist. 

Your suggestions that no credit should be given to 
the utterances of newspapers, and your citations of the 
" New- York Herald " as giving equal proof of hostility 
on our part towards Edigland, you will permit me to say, 
fall very far short of meeting the evidence derived from 
the press of your country. If the misrepresentations, 
disparagement, and scorn heaped upon us, and the 
exultation in oiu' disasters, were from only a single 
newspaper like the " New- York Herald," — adapted 
chiefly to the low Irish of New York, — or even from a 
few only of your gazettes, or of your higher and more 
authoritative periodicals, it might perhaps be thought 
that we drew unwarrantable conclusions in char2:in2r 
the entertainment of these feelmgs and sentiments 
upon the people generally. But, unfortunately, it is 
not so ; for the few^ very few, newspapers or periodi- 
cals which speak of us otherwise, or in any sympa- 
thetic or friendly tone, are marked exceptions : and 
it is not deniable, that the general, long-continued 
tone and temper of the press, in all departments, in 
a free country, is conclusive evidence of the general 
tone and temper of the people by whose support 
alone it lives. You were rather unfortunate in your 
selection of the " New- York Herald " as a like expo- 
nent of the feelings of the Free States towards England 



44 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

(though perhaps the mention of that paper is not at- 
tributahle so much to your choice as to the necessity 
of the case ; it being, I beheve, the only pubhcation 
here of that nature) ; inasmuch as no one here doubts 
that it is still, as it was at the breaking-out of the war, 
secretly in the interest, if not in the direct pay, of 
the South ; and that its diatribes- against England are 
for the very purpose of exciting hostility between your 
Government and our own, as the most effective means 
of accomplishing the success of the Rebellion, — a 
purpose which it takes care artfully to disguise under 
a great show of patriotic bluster. 

I am, therefore, compelled to the conclusion, as 
seemingly inevitable, that, however satisfactorily the 
reasons you assign may account for the opinions and 
feelings of many like yourself, and however they may 
be the basis of, or mingle with, those of a still more 
numerous class less friendly to us, or may serve as an 
excuse for the general deportment of your Govern- 
ment and people, they weigh almost nothing in 
contrast with the proofs thus exhibited of the gener- 
al national unfriendliness, and, to a great extent, of a 
national bitter hostihty, of which we complain. Of 
the true foundations of that hostility, of which you 
have, I think, quite unconsciously struck one of the 
key-notes, I shall presently attempt some explanation ; 
and some of the present causes of which, if I am right 
in my views, I think will cease when our Government 
shall have triumphed, as I have no manner of doubt 
that it will, in fully reinstating its national sovereignty. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 45 

Before doing this, I wish, as briefly as possible, to 
consider the reasons assigned by you for your opin- 
ions, feelings, and desire in reference to the contest in 
which this country is involved. 

But I have, I fear, aheady occupied as much of your 

time and patience as you can afford for one sitting, 

and will defer what I have to say on that topic to 

another opportunity. 

Ever faithfully yours, 

Charles G. Loring. 
Edwin W. Field, Esq., London. 

P. S. — Since writing the above, I lament to add fur- 
ther evidence, since received, of the unfriendly feelmg 
of your Government and governing classes towards 
us, in the recent ebullitions in Parliament concerning 
General Butler's proclamation ; a measure ill advised 
as to its phraseology undoubtedly, which is in very 
bad taste (as obnoxious to an interpretation which 
might be put upon it, though only by those to whom 
the motto applies, Honi soit qui mal y pense^ but 
which, I should have thought, no rational man could 
believe was intended), while the measure itself, in its 
practical application, has not produced one inconve- 
nience even, but much real good. 



46 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 



But, if the proclamation be censurable, the provo- 
cation was extreme, and personal to the General 
himself, and to his officers and soldiers down to the 
humblest private. 

How long, I would ask of these self-appointed 
national ce7isores morum, was it to be endured, that 
high-toned gentlemen (and there are many such in that 
army, and honest soldiers, and among them numbers 
of men of great respectability and in good position at 
home, accustomed to be treated, and to treat others, 
with decorum, and especially to treat women with 
habitual deference and delicacy, and who have left 
wives, mothers, and sisters, and are perilling their 
lives, from a sense of duty to God and their country) 
should be spit at in the streets and from windows ; 
have opprobrious epithets muttered as they passed, and 
contemptuous grimaces and gestures made to them 
when met, with the gathering-up of skirts, as if remote 
contact with the uniform they are proud to wear as a 
national badge Avere contamination ; and be saluted 
with insulting songs as they approached within hear- 
ing 1 — and all this from " ladies," as they called 
themselves, and as some were reputed? 

Whatever opinion may be entertained concerning 
the taste or expediency of such a proclamation, the 
women at whom it was directed, and who thus placed 
themselves ,on the platform of demireps, have no 
cause of complaint, and, it is pleasant to know, have 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 47 

felt the sarcasm, and mended their ways, bnt suffered 
no other mconvenicnce from it. 

I suppose that I should be esteemed, by most of 
your horrified countrymen, as guilty of an atrocious 
plebeian scandalum magnatum in saying, that the 
exhibition in that debate would be esteemed amonc: 
us simply a piece of gratuitous impertinence, were it 
not for its obvious tendency and apparent design to fan 
the flames of ill-will and contempt for us as an igno- 
ble people, — the cherished notion among your aristoc- 
racy, which ah-eady sufficiently pervcides the English 
mind towards this country, and which, as all foreign 
wars grow out of excited feelings fiir more frequently 
than from conflicting principles or even diverse in- 
terests, it seems more desirable to moderate than to 
encourage. 

I might, I think, allude with much justice, in con- 
nection with this topic, to many things m the conduct 
of your countrymen in the late Chinese wars, in the 
suppression of the uprising in India, and elsewhere 
m not distant hlstori/, which those who throw stones 
might be warned in prudence to remember; but I 
forbear, because it would give me no pleasure, and 
because I wish, as far as the subjects of discussion 
will possibly admit, to avoid all semblance of person- 
ality. 

But I may certainly ask, and with emphasis too, how 
happens it that this proclamation of an individual offi- 
cer, however offensive it may be considered, from which 
no one has suffered any thing but mortification from the 



48 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

sarcasm it conveys, at the worst a mere hrutiim fulmen^ 
should thus excite the indignation of your rulers and 
Parliamentary orators, and be held up as involving our 
Government ^n^Nationm disgrace, and lead to sugges- 
tions of remonstrance on the part of your Government^ 
(Heaven save the mark !) while the barbarities of the 
" acknowledged helligerents" in murdering wounded 
soldiers, as they have done after almost every battle ; 
in mutilating and disgracing the remains of the dead, 
and converting theii bones into ornaments for their 
female friends, and, in more than one instance, their 
skulls into drinking-cups ; in poisoning wells, and 
leaving poisoned food in their deserted camps ; in 
depositing torpedoes and shells, with locks attached, 
in their tents and furniture, and under ground in their 
abandoned fortifications ; in shooting prisoners of 
war in their jails, innocent of offence, for merely 
approaching to look out of the windows ; and their 
other atrocities daily committed, and not denied, — 
how is it that these shocking acts pass not only uncen- 
sured, but unnoticed ? And what inference onust we 
draw from it f 

I send by this post a Report of a Committee of Con- 
gress upon the atrocities perpetrated by the rebels, 
which is authentic proof of some of them ; also a 
copy of the "National Intelhgencer," containing a criti- 
cism on Lord Brougham's recent remarks on our war 
and institutions, and also containing a speech of a 
North-Carolinian, Mr. Stanley, now military governor 
of that State ; — to all which I invite your attention. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 49 



V. 

June 26, 1862. 
My dear Friend, 

In approaching the consideration of your reasons 
for the suggested expediency and desirableness of the 
severance of our Union and the disruption of our Gov- 
ernment, I must premise (not relying merely upon 
your candor to appreciate the freedom of the remark, 
but also upon its bearing upon the argument), that it 
is matter of constant observation and marvel to us 
Americans, how difficult, or rather how impossible, it 
seems to be for one of your countrymen to appreciate, 
I might perhaps say to comprehend, the nature and 
working of our Government. Its novelty in political 
history, and its complexity, as consisting of one impe- 
rial, and, for all national purposes^ sovereign power, 
embracing numerous members equally sovereign, and 
independent of it in certain municipal and other sub- 
ordinate capacities and functions, doubtless account 
for this in a great measure ; though other causes, here- 
after to be adverted to, creating disinclination, not to 
say disgust, and a certain degree of contempt, for the 
study of American politics, are strongly operative in 
this as in other evil influences against us. And I 
believe it to be one of the great blessings to come 
from this fiery trial, — in which I cannot but rejoice 

7 



50 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

(thougli in sadness for its multiplied miseries), as 
sent no less in mercy than in judgment, — that the 
nature, ends, and power of the Union will henceforth 
be better appreciated abroad as well as at home, and 
command that consideration and respect which its 
peaceful history seems to have failed to secure. 

Now, I have no doubt that you understand this 
subject better than nine hundred and ninety-nine 
thousand and nine hundred and ninety-nine of your 
countrymen, — perhaps, and for aught I know, as well 
as the very best informed among them : and yet you, 
lookuig at what you assume to be differences in 
character between the people of the Free and those 
of the Slave States (which differences you esteem vital- 
ly destructive of all harmonious union between them), 
" wonder that we are not anxious to let them go " ; 
consider it natural enough that we should wish to 
punish them for their perfidy and rascality, but " in- 
comprehensible how we can desire to do so in order to 
continue them as equals and partners'' ; thmk it would 
be highly praiseworthy in us " to narrow their houn- 
daries^ secure the commiand of the llississippi, cut them, 
off from the Territories, and reclaim as much of the 
Border States as possible from the dominion of the 
Devil" and that this would call down the plaudits of all 
Em-ope ; — but for us " to avow that we fight only to put 
down a rebellion," is to admit, you tliink, that " there 
is nothhig in the elemental principles of j)olicy at the 
North and at the South to prevent their re -union " ; and 
you are of opinion, that if we say, " We fight to maia- 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 51 

tain the Constitution," we should remember " that it was 
made with hands, and not to be worshipped as eternal," 
and that '-'forms of government, like forms of belief, 
vary, and are meant to vary, from age to age " ; that, to 
have the sympathy of Europe, we must say that the men 
of the South " are, not rebels, hut enemies, whom we 
will fight to the death and a outrance ; and whom, 
till they renounce, and from their hearts disclaim, their 
DeviTs doctrine of the right divine of White sovereignty, 
we will never, no, never, take to be the partners of our 
bosom again" And you say, that, "/or one, you devout- 
ly hope, not in the mterest of England, but of humanity, 
that the tendency of this civil war may be to divide us 
into different governments and nations ; " and you state 
your belief that " all England, and certainly all our 
best friends there, wish to see us clear of the South." 
Now, my friend, for us to do, or to avow that we 
are fighting to accomplish, any one of these things, 
which you wonder that we are not doing, or avowing 
our design to do, would be, ipso facto, an abandon- 
ment and renunciation of our w^hole nationality ; would 
for ever terminate our existence as a nation; and 
would break us up into as many fragments, at the least, 
as we now have separate States, — and into how many 
more, as constituting the political chaos into which we 
should instantly fall, God only, in his omniscience, 
can foresee. This is our great pomt. We know it to 
be true ; and we perceive that it is one which no Eng- 
lishman has seen, or, at least, appeared to comprehend. • 
Can I make it plain to you ? 



52 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

Our national existence, our only unity as a nation, 
is founded, and rests wholly, upon a certain written 
compact, called the Constitution. AVe haA^e no other 
bond of union than this. For us to violate, or at- 
tempt to violate, the rights of any one State, secured 
to it by the Constitution, — as we should do by such 
acts or avowals as you propose, — is at once to release 
the* citizens of that State from all obligations under 
our compact of nationality, and to authorize it, as 
matter of legal and moral right, to abjure the Union, 
our only national bond ; and would be a self-confessed 
disregard of our reciprocal obligations as members of 
the nation, which would virtually and practically de- 
stroy our existence as such. No State, nor any number 
of States, can be permitted to separate from the others, 
and disavow the joint constitutional authority of the 
whole, unless in the manner provided by that Consti- 
tution, without immediate and entire national disinte- 
gration : for, if one or several may, each and every 
one may ; and there would remain no longer a nation, 
but an mcoherent aggregate of political atoms, without 
consistency, or power for any effective national purpose. 
No national policy could be instituted, or remain per- 
manent or efficient ; no national law would be impera- 
tive ; no power, no treaty, be buiding upon any known 
number of subjects, or extent of territory ; and our 
nationality, which alone can secure us from foreign 
aggression and internal commotions, would cease to 
exist, or be nothing more than a rope of sand. All that 
could be hoped for would be the formation of another 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 53 

Union of the citizens of the remaining States : but who 
can suppose, that with all their diversities of territorial 
extent, population, position, character, and interests, 
a new and complete voluntary union could be accom- 
plished among these 1 or who but a madman would 
tlii'ow away our present national life upon such a ven- 
ture, or think any sacrifice of wealth, comfort, or 
blood, too great to save us from the unutterable, if 
not endless, misery and ruin which would follow ? 

It is in seeming oversight or forgetfulness of all this, 
that you tell me that we taught you the lesson, that 
there is no such thing as " gigantic rebellion," when 
we separated ourselves from the mother-country ; and 
that England w^ould be willing that the Canadas should 
form themselves into independent States, or unite with 
us, if they should elect so to do : appearing to think, 
that for us to allow the Slave States to separate from 
the Union at their pleasure, w^ould be the same thing 
as for England to allow any of her Colonies to become 
independent nationalities. The difference, however, is 
most obvious. In any such case, the nationality of 
England would remaui unimpaired. She would lose, it 
is true, a portion of her subjects and of her territory ; 
but the residue would still remain the same nation, 
under the same Imperial Government. On the other 
hand, for us to admit the right of any one State thus, 
against the terms of the Constitution and the consent 
of the rest, to abjure its allegiance, would be to admit 
the right of every other State to do so too, and at 
once to dissolve and scatter to the wmds the only bond 



54 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

of our nationality. If, after we shall have subdued this 
infernal Rebellion, any of the Slave States shall apply 
to be released from the Union in the manner pointed 
out in the Constitution itself for making amendments 
thereto, then will be the time to consider that question : 
it might be possible, in that way, to assent, without 
shaking the whole fabric to pieces. But so long as they 
claim the adverse right to do so of then- own mere will, 
and attempt to force us into submission to the demand, 
our national existence requires of us that we resist, to 
the last dollar and the last man. 

This is with us an article of faith at least ; and we 
should fight upon it against a world in arms, — yield- 
ing to nothing but supreme and irresistible force, — 
just upon the principle on which an individual man 
fights for his life. 

A case more nearly approaching to ours than those 
you thus suggest, but still widely different, would be 
the rebellion of Ireland or Scotland or Wales, or some 
one or more of your great counties, claimmg the right 
to separate, at their own pleasure, from the Imperial 
Government, and to establish themselves as independ- 
ent empires. Are you prepared to say, that you or 
your countrymen would assent to it, even if all the 
people of those districts desired it 1 Still more, are 
you prepared to say, that the nation Avould, or ought 
to, assent to it, when it was perfectly apparent, that 
this declaration of independence was not the act or 
intelligent desire of the great body of the people of 
the revolting district, but the movement of a small 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 55 

band of conspirators among them, (consulting their 
own selfish and odious interests,) who by cu-cumstances 
had acquked the political control of the whole body, 
and induced great numbers of ignorant men to fol- 
low and join them in arms by every species of falsehood 
and misrepresentation concerning the action and de- 
signs of the Imperial Government? Let the history 
of Ii-eland answer these questions. And yet you could 
assent to this with as much self-respect and propriety, 
and quite as much security, as w^e can assent to the 
enforced separation of the Slave States from our 
National Government. Indeed, you could do it with 
vastly greater safety: for even then your National 
Government would still exist ; your sovereignty would 
be unimpahed, and would lose none of its authority 
over the remaining territories and their inhabitants ; 
because that Government is not theoretically nor prac- 
tically founded on any express compact, or composed 
of distinct members, the citizens of which are volun- 
tarily united under one superior controlling power, — 
whereas our National Government is expressly so 
founded and formed, and it is only by denying the 
right of secession at will that it can continue to exist 
as a national sovereignty. 

In the light, therefore, of the compact which con- 
stitutes the essence of our nationality, fusing the citi- 
zens of several distinct States into one for all national 
purposes, (which compact, as its basis, distinguishes 
it from every other case of national union depending 
upon historical association, right of conquest, treaty, 



56 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

confederation, or other form of unity and dominion,) 
it is, I think, very clear that we have now no alterna- 
tive whatsoever but to surrender our national life, or 
to compel the rebels to submission. 

It is not to be inferred, however, because our na- 
tionality rests upon express compact between the citi- 
zens of political bodies, which were previously to all 
intents, and still are, quasi sovereignties for certain 
internal and municipal purposes, — and because this na- 
tionahty must be regulated and controlled by the terms 
of that compact, in the construction of its scope, 
powers, and obligations, and the obligations of its 
members, — that we have none of the other bonds of 
connection and sympathy which bind the citizens 
of other nations to each other and to their respective 
governments. Although thus separated into diverse 
municipalities, each independent in its own sphere, 
we have not come mto our present national life by 
any arbitrary combmation, or merely voluntary asso- 
ciation : we grew into it, just as Great Britain slowly 
grew to be the nation she is. Our growth and pro- 
gress as a nation have been by natural increase, in the 
same manner in which she and all other great nations 
have gradually expanded from small beginnings into 
a powerful people. We have grown to this condition 
with all the corresponding sympathies, consciousness 
of mutual dependence and interest, and loyalty to the 
supreme power, (until disturbed by the Slaveholders' 
Conspiracy,) which can alone form a real and happy 
union. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 57 

We are essentially a homogeneous people ; quite as 
much so as, I might say more so than, the various 
populations which constitute the British Empire. 

We started with only thirteen feeble and sparsely 
inhabited States, and with a population of about three 
millions ; and the twenty-one new States have not 
joined us after becoming themselves distinct and pow- 
erful communities having a foreign origin ; but have 
sprung from oiu- loms, and been raised under our nur- 
tiu-e and care as Territorial children, until, having 
attained to sufficient strength and maturity to take 
thek positions as equals in the family chcle, they have 
been admitted as such : while the population of the 
old States, increasing with unexampled rapidity, has 
peopled these new States and these Territories from the 
common stock, mingled with foreign elements, until the 
present population of twenty-seven millions and more 
of whites is as homogeneous as that of any other great 
nation on earth, and as firmly united, with the excep- 
tion above stated, in national sentiment and loyalty. 

And no nation ever gave greater proof of its con- 
sciousness of such mutual mterests, sympathy, and 
loyalty to its Government, than the people of the Free 
States (comprising nearly tliree-fourths of the free 
population of the whole nation, and more than nine- 
tenths of those capable of appreciating their own 
interests and the nature of a free Government) have 
shown in this struggle ; in which they have risen as 
one man to defend the Government, and the honor 
and inviolability of the national flag, — to defend and 



58 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

maintain them to the end, as they will, come what 
may. For, when the marvellous truth shall be told, 
history will show that this whole vast Rebellion is 
actually the work of a small portion only of about 
two or three hundred thousand slaveholders out of 
the twenty-seven millions of free citizens of the United 
States. A few ambitious and unprincipled conspira- 
tors among these slaveholders have stkred up a large 
part of them, as a class, to this Rebellion, for the 
perpetuity and propagation of slavery, as a means 
of perpetuating their own poHtical power, and pre- 
serving their own miserable property in human flesh 
against the moral assaults of the whole civilized 
world ; and the slaveholders, as a class (only three 
hundred thousand of them in all, owning each from 
one or two slaves to a thousand or more), being 
thus stirred up, have succeeded for a while in deceiv- 
ing and deluding the miserable 2^^^^ whites (whom 
they i:ule, and whose condition in the Slave States 
is to a great extent, if not generally, worse than that 
of the slave, and must ever so continue as long as 
slavery endures) into the belief that the Free States 
are seeking to reduce them to slavery, by placing 
them upon an equality with the blacks, and mak- 
ing them tojxether the " hewers of wood and drawers 
of water " for the North. 

This is the whole final cause of the llebellion : and 
our war, though it unavoidably embraces all rebels in 
arms, is really and in principle not against the States 
or people of the South, but against a portion of these 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 59 

three hundred thousand slaveholders, whose political 
power it is necessary to overthrow and suppress, mth- 
out refusing to the people of those States any abso- 
lute rights which the Constitution secures to them ; 
among which is that of regulating their own right 
of property, within their own territorial jurisdiction, 
accordhig to then' own municipal laws, so long as 
these do not contravene any express provision of the 
National Constitution. We cannot make war upon 
slavery as such, because it exists only by the munici- 
pal law of the State in which it is, and mihappily is not 
prohibited to the several States by the terms of the 
Constitution, which leaves each State free to make its 
own internal laws. But we can and do make war to 
coerce to obedience the slaveholders who have proved 
to be traitors and rebels, and therefore, m one sense, 
public enemies, though citizens and subjects. We 
must first effectually beat, and break up, their armed 
array, whatever number of deluded adherents it may 
embrace. That done, counter-revolution is sure, as we 
believe, to follow among the people of the Slave States 
themselves, awakened to a knowledge of the miserable 
deceptions which have been practised upon them. 
The conspirators who have misled them will be dis- 
carded as political leaders ; healthier influences will 
gradually prevail ; the Union will be restored ; and at 
last we have reason to hope that slavery itself may be 
abolished in State after State, by the act of its own 
people, encouraged and aided by the National Govern- 
ment. Such is our theory of the war, and the probable 



60 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

consequences of success to the national arms. At 
any rate, how can we but strive for it to the utmost, 
when the alternative is our rum and destruction as a 
nation, — to say nothing of the establishment by our 
side of that monster, a separate repubhc, founded upon 
the perpetuation of slavery ? 

Your next suggestion is, that, if we were fighting " to 
hold them in subjurjation^' we should have the sympa- 
thy of Europe : but you warn us that this would be a 
bad speculation, as illustrated in your subjugation of 
Ireland, causing you four hundred years of trouble 
and vexation, hardly yet quieted ; and in the occupa- 
tion of Rome by the French, which causes so much 
embarrassment. But it is obvious that the same objec- 
tions as I have already stated, exist to any such mode 
of proceeding. 

To hold the citizens of the revolted States as mere 
foreign enemies, occupying territories belonging to 
them, which we are to acquire by conquest, (instead of 
accounting them as rebels,) would be to consider and 
treat them as having ceased, by their own voluntary 
action, to be citizens of the United States ; and so would 
be a tacit, if not express, admission that they had thus 
been able to break the bond of Union, by converting 
themselves from citizens into foreign foes ; and that the 
citizens of other States, by a similar course, might ac- 
quire the status of independent sovereignties or foreign 
enemies, to be restored to the Union only as conquered 
territories. We must treat them as rebellious citizens^ 
entitled as such, on submission, to the restoration of 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 61 

all their constitutional rights, or else we renounce all 
claim, legal or moral, to their allegiance, — and so 
admit that our nationality, which rests upon the com- 
pact they are violating, may be voluntarily or forcibly 
dissolved at the will of any one or more of the parties 
to it. 

But, my dear friend, laying aside the considera- 
tions founded upon the peculiarities of our national 
organization and political institutions (which, however 
substantial and of inevitable obligation in our view, 
may seem to any but an American more or less 
artificial or technical), if we look upon our position 
from the stand-point common to all natjonal govern- 
ments, however originated or founded, we camiot 
shut out of view the right and obligation of self-pro- 
tection to be exerted by governments for the safety 
and welfare of all their subjects, including those in re- 
volt. Our duty in this emergency is equally as manifest 
to us as the similar duty is to all other governments. 
We think our case, in this respect, needs only to be 
understood to be universally admitted. Should we, 
for the moment, overlook the efiect of our written 
Constitution, and consider our nationality as having 
no other foundation or bond than the simple facts of an 
existing National Government, certain peculiarities 
of boundaries or position, and certain historical asso- 
ciations, hke those of all other countries, includmg 
your own, 



62 THE PEESENT EELATIONS BETWEEN 



we have -assuredly no other safety or hope of future 
'peace and security for any one of the loyal States but 
in' the preservation of this nationahty complete and 
unbroken. 

Suppose that the Slave States should prevail in this 
struggle, or, being permitted to secede, should establish 
one or more independent confederacies, or govern- 
ments of whatever form, (thus having command of the 
mouth of the Mississippi, and of the large extent of 
territory bordering on that river and the Ohio and 
theh tributaries, and the command of the Gulf of 
Mexico, and the possession of the coast of Florida and 
the Tortugas, and other dependent islands, — the keys 
to all the navigation between the other Atlantic States 
and the West Indies, and all south of them,) what 
would be the condition of the Free States, supposing 
them to continue united? what then- security against 
constant encroachment, aggression, and insult upon 
their commerce \ and what possibility could there be 
of any continued peace or security, or of long sub- 
mission to the consequent restrictions upon theh 
mercantile freedom and growth, or to the power to 
impose such restrictions "? If there were no other 
causes for jealousy, hatred, and contention, than those 
found in such relative positions and conditions, con- 
stant and desolating wars by sea and land would, 
according to the teachings of all history, be the inevi- 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 63 

table consequence, even supposing the populations 
of the tAYo sections of Slave and Free States to be 
thoroughly homogeneous, or not more heterogeneous 
than those of European nations ordinarily are, com- 
pared with their next-door neighbor. 

But there would enter here another element also 
of mitation, jealousy, and collision, still more fatal. 
Slavery, reigning supreme and uncontrolled m the 
Slave Empire, unchecked by any higher civilization 
than that it admits of, and demanding constant exten- 
sion as essential to its contmuance and prosperity, would 
augment the baseness, perfidy, and ferocity of the 
Southern character, so lamentably shown in this war 
to be its natm-al fruit ; — would accelerate the progress 
of social tyranny, essential for its mamtenance, ahke 
over the white man and the black, until it would culmi- 
nate in a military despotism, mtensifying the jealousies, 
distrust, and hatred of the people on either side ; — 
would give perpetual cause of collision in questions 
concernmg the escape and siu'render of fugitive slaves, 
and the extension or regulation of boundaries ; — and 
would render the support of large standing armies 
and na\ies the only condition of even tolerable peace 
or security. And to this is to be added the certainty 
of alliances between Eiu-opean maritime powers and 
the Slave States, rendered necessary for these by theu' 
mability to mamtain a navy, or cope with that of the 
Free Atlantic States ; for which alliances compen- 
sation would be requhed in peculiar privileges or 
benefits mjurious to the commerce and prosperity 



64 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

of the Free States, and soon to involve them in foreign 
war with other nations also. 

Or suppose that the Cotton States alone were allowed 
to secede and become independent: they would, of 
course, have the entu'e right to throw themselves into 
the arms of any foreign power which might be induced 
to form an alliance with them or take them imder 
protection, or with whom they might elect to unite 
themselves as parts of its emphe ; and would thus 
place in foreign hands, by legal right, the command of 
the Mississippi and its tributaries, the Gulf, the Florida 
coast, and the navigation of the Atlantic. And is there 
any thing in the history of the great European powers 
most immediately interested, or in the dispositions 
manifested by them in this contest, or any thing in 
human nature, as manifested in the love of national 
power, to make it doubtful how soon such alhance, 
protection, or absorption, would take place 1 

We believe that no clearer proposition can be 
stated, than that, owing to the geographical arrange- 
ment of the country we occupy (its mountain ranges 
and its rivers excluding all possibility of natural na- 
tional barriers), and the peculiarities of its seacoast, 
it is essential, alike to mternal peace and prosperity 
and to security from foreign enemies, that it should 
ever be under one National Government ; — and that 
this necessity is immeasurably increased by the exist- 
ence among us of that accm'sed system of slavery pre- 
vailmg in one portion of it (entailed upon us by your 
Government as one of its colonial institutions, our only 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. G5 

woe), whose extinction, in the manner most for the 
interest of the slave as well as of the master, can only 
be nnder the controlling inflnence of a civilization 
superior to any which can exist where it remains 
mider no other control than that of slave-owners, or 
abettors of the system. 

The necessity, therefore, we are under of carrying- 
on this war for the subjugation of the rebels, to com- 
pel their return to then- allegiance, is clearly, we think, 
absolute ; growing alike out of our peculiar political 
organizations as a nation, and the fact of our existence 
as one ; and founded on those principles of policy, 
humanity, and right, upon which all national sovereign- 
ties rest then- obligation and their power to compel the 
obedience of rebellious subjects. 

I had hoped to conclude in this letter my replies 
to the views advocated by you, of the feasibility and 
desh'ableness of the disintegration of our National 
Government ; but I am unable to do so, as its already 
seemingly unconscionable length leads me to fear that 
it will have exhausted your patience. I shall do so 
in my next, and then enter upon my defence to " the 
indictment, and speech for the prosecution," made by 
you against my own people and Government. 

Ever faithfully yours, 

Charles G. Loring. 

Edwin W. Field, Esq. 



66 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 



YI. 

Boston, July 10, 1862. 

My dear Friend, 

In reply to your arguments in vindication of your 
wish that our Union may be destroyed, and one or more 
separate nationahties take its place, (founded upon the 
hypothesis, that it would be best for us to be thus 
relieved from the burthen of maintaining a house 
divided against itself, and that national, moral, and 
intellectual progress and freedom would flourish better 
under the subdivision and the consequent competition,) 
it is perhaps enough to say, that, whatever course it 
might be wise for us to pursue, if our comitry Avere in 
our hands an unorganized territory, to be parcelled out 
according to our notions of national policy, this is not 
now an open question. I have already shown, I trust, the 
utter impracticability of any such division now, (consist- 
ently with any present or prospective peace or security, 
internal or external,) owing to the geographical features 
of our territory, and our existing political organiza- 
tion, which cannot be broken up without severmg us 
into, not two or three only, but thirty-four or more, 
fragmentary nationalities, the re-union of which, or of 
any portion of which, would be a problem too hazard- 
ous for any rational man to venture upon, if it could 
possibly be avoided. But if the question were an open 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. G7 

one, and it were left for us to decide upon the political 
organizations among- which power should be distribut- 
ed, I should maintain, that, laying aside the disturbance 
caused by this infernal system of slavery (our only 
woe, — a woe inherited as one of the cherished 
colonial institutions of your Government, and for 
which, therefore, our own is not accountable ; but 
the early termination of which, on the contrary, it 
contemplated, and, at its formation, passed laws in- 
tended to effect ; and which it never fostered until 
insidiously infolded in the coils of the serpent by a 
long-continued, secret, and most wicked conspiracy, 
now culminating in treason and rebellion), — laying 
aside, I say, this mighty and peculiar evil, not involved 
nor to be estimated in any general question such as 
you propose, I should maintain, and with the greatest 
confidence too, that our exj)eriment seems to have 
satisfactorily proved, that many subordmate and inde- 
pendent republics (each sovereign within its own 
sphere of action, extending to the domestic relations, to 
municipal laws, and to all exclusively internal govern- 
ment,) combined as one nation under a written Consti- 
tution clearly defining their and the nation's respective 
powers, and vesting in the National Legislature and 
Administration all those necessary for the maintenance 
and enforcement of its external relations to other na- 
tions, and also those necessary for its mternal harmony 
and support as one nation, — are exceedingly well 
adapted (if not the best form, so far as history teaches, 
that could be devised) for the internal peace, security. 



bo THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

and material prosperity, and equally for the moral and 
intellectual progress, of the mass of the people, and 
for maintaining a position of strength, dignity, and in- 
fluence among the other nations of the earth, suffi- 
cient for all external security and the advancement of 
external commercial prosperity. 

What government heretofore known has secured, 
for the space of eighty years, so much of mternal peace 
and prosperity to its subjects, or been so free from 
the agitations and distresses of foreign wars '? And 
what people ever, in the same period of time, made 
greater progress in numbers, in wealth and civihzation, 
and in general happiness and prosperity, saving only 
the unhappy portion of it cursed with slavery as part 
of its inheritance I 

But I go much farther, and mamtain that the man- 
ner in which this Government has grappled with the 
fearful monster, called by the mild name of Secession, 
so suddenly and unexpectedly appearing in the midst 
of a peaceful and peace-loving community, and the 
manner in which the central power of the nation is 
crushing out this gigantic and long-prepared trea- 
son, — the calmness and self-control of the people 
under circumstances so appalling, never losing for a 
moment thek fkmness or self-possession m the most 
disastrous moments, but submitting with entire loyalty 
to the measures of the Government and of those in 
authority, in however ill accordance with their pre- 
viously declared feelings and opinions, — and the 
unstinted confidence with which they pour out life and 



GEEAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 69 

wealth for its j)i'otection, — are not only proof of its 
capacity and sufficiency for the protection of its citizens 
from all ordinary dangers of domestic or foreign foes, 
but prove it to be in truth the strongest government 
hitherto known for every purpose that touches the 
heart of a people. 

It may savor to you of national vanity, or of much 
self-deception, when I say, that we have no belief that 
any other Government, standing merely on its power 
to command the resources and services of its subjects, 
could have encountered an internal foe of such gigan- 
tic proportions (encouraged and indirectly aided by 
the strongest of foreign nations) with the power and 
success which have thus far signalized the inherent 
strength and capacity of our own, — restmg, in the 
Free States, entirely upon the affection^ and will of the 
whole people, who feel themselves to he the Govern- 
ment, acting through accredited agents ; and who, ac- 
knowledging no superior governing class or classes, 
but knowing that their safety is entirely in their own 
hands and dependent on their own individual respon- 
sibility and energy, march coolly and resolutely, as 
one man, to its rescue from the overthrow with which 
it is threatened. 

What other government now existing could, in the 
same short space of time, (starting with no military 
preparation worth speaking of,) after fifty years of 
profound peace, have brought so many thoroughly 
armed and well-disciplined soldiers, or indeed so many 
soldiers of any kind, into the field ; — have built and 



70 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

equipped such a newly invented navy as in a few 
weeks will line our coasts and rivers, or could have 
incurred such enormous expenditures, without serious 
diminution, if not utter ruin, of its credit ? Yet, with 
us, the credit of the Government, however shaken in 
Eiu'opean estimation, has actually grown at home 
almost in proportion to the immense demands made 
upon it. 

We have entire faith, that when this Kebellion, so 
unhappily prolonged by the sympathy and indirect aid 
of other nations from whom better things were hoped, 
shall have been effectually suppressed (as we believe 
it soon will be, if England and France do not forcibly 
intervene in its support, and as it finally will be, 
whether they intervene or not), the strength, vitality, 
and permanence of Republican Government will have 
vanished from the list of debatable questions, however 
much other forms, for other reasons, may be preferred 
by those to whom republican equality is distasteful. 

You will excuse this ebullition of Americanism in 
one who is called upon to defend the political insti- 
tutions of his country (which, next to his religious 
faith, are the objects of his love and veneration) 
against arguments urged for their disruption and 
overthrow. 

One of your chief complaints against us — pervad- 
ing more or less the whole of your press and public 
oratory on the subject — is, that we, in fighting to 
maintain the Constitution and the Union, are not con- 
tending for freedom, but arc in truth, whatever may 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 71 

be our pretences, fighting for the continuance and 
support of slavery, which the Constitution and Union 
recognize in effect as a portion of the organic law, and 
the protection of which they are pledged, to a certain 
extent, to enforce. This is relied npon very firmly, 
and, I doubt not, sincerely, by many conscientious 
persons, as justifying not only the want of any sym- 
pathy with our cause, but much of the ill-will prevail- 
ing towards ns ; though it is hard to understand why 
it should, as it manifestly seems to do, cause your 
countrymen actually to take sides against us, as if Ave 
of the Free States were the supporters of slavery, and 
the slaveholding rebels the champions of freedom. 

This complaint, however, I must be permitted to say, 
seems founded in very superficial and narrow views of 
the origin and nature of the conflict, and in entire 
misapprehension of its probable, and, as we believe, 
inevitable result. 

It is never to be forgotten in this discussion, that we 
have not placed ourselves in our present position by 
any voluntary agency on our part. 

In the providence of God, the people of the Free 
States were, by the force of circumstances, combined 
with the Slave States mto one nation for mutual 
support and protection, with this inherited problem 
of human bondage pervadmg one portion of it, to be 
w^orked out as part of its mission or destiny, and to 
be solved, in its influences upon our national life and 
character, according to those laws of self-preservation 
and moral obligation which He has established for the 



72 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

government of the world. We have no escape. We 
mnst encounter the question, as presented in all its 
momentous bearings and consequences, with courage 
and fh'mness, according to our sense of duty, or basely 
shrmk from it as unequal to the conflict. 

Now, our well-considered and fii'm conviction is, 
that the path of duty is plam before us, m reference 
both to our own welfare, and, especially, to that of the 
great numbers, as we believe, of loyal citizens m the 
Slave States, — in reference even to the best interests 
of the traitors themselves and their wretched slaves, 
and to those of the still more wretched poor whites 
deluded into this war, (which, if successful on their 
side, can only terminate in the perpetuation of theu* 
own abject ignorance and poverty, and in preventing 
the possibility of thek redemption to the position of 
intelligent freemen,) all of whom are component parts 
of the nation whose welfare is intrusted to our 
keeping. 

We see in this Rebellion the natural fruits of 
slavery acting upon the prmciples and tempers 
of the owners of slaves (the perfidy and ferocity of 
large numbers of whom, if not of the majority, 
have been so unexpectedly and fearfully devel- 
oped in the inception and prosecution of the con- 
spiracy), and acting, too, upon the habits and char- 
acters of the mass of the white populations subjected 
by its inevitable operation to their control : and we 
religiously believe that we see in it also the clearly 
appointed means for the final extirpation of the atro- 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES, 73 

cious system, so long the curse and disgrace of 
American, and, by its origin, of Anglo-Saxon civili- 
zation. 

The Rebellion places us, the Free States and the 
Slave States, in one of three inevitable positions. 
Fu'st, we of the North must concede to the men of 
the South their asserted right of secession by yield- 
ing to their forcible maintenance of it, and so enable 
them to establish a slave empire, or perhaps more 
than one, founded on human bondage as the corner- 
stone ojL' basis of their social and political institutions ; — 
or, secondly, we must extirpate the evil by universal 
emancipation by the edge of the sword, destroying at 
a blow the whole basis of the industrial pursuits of a 
very large portion of our country, incurring the fear- 
ful hazards of immeasurable present misery thus to be 
inflicted upon its whole population (including large 
numbers, as we believe, of loyal fellow-citizens, and 
the unhappy slaves themselves, wholly unprepared for 
freedom or self-guidance), and retaining theh territories 
as parts of the national domain, to be re-organized 
under new social institutions, corresponding with those 
of* the Free States, by such of the inhabitants as shall 
remain, and by colonization from without ; — or, as the 
only remaining course, we must compel the return of 
the people of the Slaves States to then- allegiance to 
the Union and the Constitution, admitting all the rights 
which these secure to them, and relying upon our 
future ability to deal with the subject of slavery as the 
laws of humanity and of self-interest, and moral and re- 

10 



74 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

ligious obligations, (operating npon the people of those 
States under the influence of the Free States,) shall dic- 
tate. This we must do in full confidence that the pre- 
dominance of slavery, as a political power in our national 
councils, has received its death-blow ; that its extension 
is rendered impossible ; that its vaunted prestige, as a 
type of high civilization, is for ever gone ; and that a 
daily increasing consciousness of its ruinous imbecility, 
in contrast with free labor, within confined limits, and 
of its incompatibility with the material strength, pros- 
perity, happiness, or general cultivation of the people, 
will sooner or later lead to gradual emancipation under 
wise and humane laws, administered with a just regard 
to the rights and interests of all, and untrammelled by 
any want of ample means to be generously expended 
by the nation for the common honor, safety, and hap- 
piness of the whole people. 

I have already stated some of the reasons why the 
obligations of self-preservation, of religion, of law, and 
of humanity, call upon us to resist, at every cost of life 
or treasure, and at all hazards, the establishment of any 
slave empire carved out of this republic. There are, 
at present, comparatively very few among us, who, from 
regard either to the whites or to the blacks, would 
recklessly attempt sudden and immediate abolition, if 
it can be avoided ; while the great mass of the people 
are resolutely determined, if possible, to sustain the 
Union, with the Constitution as it is, believing that 
the natural laws of God's government will eventually, 
and at no very distant day, solve the great problem in 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 75 

the manner last suggested, with the least possible 
uijury to all existing rights and interests. 

But if this solution shall be found to be impracti- 
cable ; if the South shall with pertinacious recklessness 
continue its desperate struggle, or shall he aided in 
continuing it with hetter hope of success by foreign 
intervention, so that the alternative must be either the 
destruction of the Union, or the immediate extermi- 
nation of slavery, — then we have no doubt either of 
our interest or of our right under the laws of self- 
preservation, or of our duty to God and to man, to 
extu'pate the curse at once by all means hi our power. 
We shall not falter nor hesitate in this fearful task, 
but go straight on, leaving the consequences m the 
hands of Ilim who " causeth the wrath of man to 
praise him," and upon the heads of those who have 
thus brought upon themselves an awful retribution 
for a degree of wickedness and folly beyond all former 
example. We shudder to contemplate the probable 
consequences of such a war to the present genera- 
tion of men ; but, looking into the great futiu-e, they 
weigh in our estimation but as dust in the balance, 
compared with the certain and endless miseries of 
national dowirfall. Will such nations as Great Britain 
and France, the boasted champions of modern civili- 
zation, take upon themselves the dire responsibility of 
creating or fostering such a revolutionary struggle as 
this ? Would they, if they could, inscribe themselves 
on the pages of history as the virtual founders of the 
only empire the world ever saw which presumed to 



76 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

build itself on the atrocious principle of perpetuating 
human slavery ? Or, taking part with the slaveholders 
in a struggle which has this for its end, under the spe- 
cious guise of obe}ing the call of humanity to put an 
end to a sanguinary strife mcidentally affecting for a 
time theh own commercial interests, would they ex- 
pect to come out of a mortal contest with the great 
body of the American people with less loss to them- 
selves than the value of the interests which now suffer 
from a temporary cause? I see nothing that could 
come of it but prolongation of war, fearfully increased 
bloodshed, and a vast rum of material interests for all 
parties, incurred in the name of humanity and civiliza- 
tion, but for the real purpose of crushing the Free 
American people, and erecting on the wreck of theh 
Union an empu'e of everlasting slavery. 

I have thus, my friend, endeavored to present to you 
the American side of the great question in hand, in 
answer to the arguments you urge as infiuencmg the 
English mmd a^amst us in our struo-o-le with the Slave 
States : and although fully conscious of the feeble and 
imperfect manner in which I have handled so vast a 
theme, the proper exposition of which would requhe 
a volume rather than a letter, I trust that the views I 
have presented may tend to satisfy you, that our quarrel 
is not on a pomt of honor, nor for empire nor acreage, 
nor from a spirit of vindictiveness or revenge, but 
for national life, and the cause of good government, 
law, and humanity ; and that the surest and quick- 
est mode of exthpatmg slavery, and insuring the down- 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 77 

f\ill of what you justly call the DeviFs kmgdom m 
this country, (if such be the deshe of your country- 
men,) is not by sympathy and aid to the consphators, 
inspiring them with constant hope of speedy interven- 
tion in then- behalf, but by that prompt and decisive 
discouragement of their cause which shall for ever 
crush that hope, and lead them, in the consciousness 
of their helplessness without it, to return to theh alle- 
giance. 

And allow me to add, that this course is, as we all 
here think, that which the material interests of your 
country and of France, as well as of our own, impera- 
tively demand. If our war be soon terminated (as it 
must be if left to our own management), the supply of 
cotton will be in a great measure immediately resumed, 
and trade between our countries be extensively revived ; 
though this will not, probably for many years, be of the 
magnitude hitherto existmg, as the habits and necessi- 
ties forced upon us by the war have had the inevitable 
effect of driving us to measm-es of self-protection, and 
independence of foreign supplies, hi manufactures of 
clothing, and arms and munitions of war, and artificial 
luxuries, — and of weakenmg the bonds of friendly in- 
tercourse so conducive to profitable trade. 

But if England or France, or both, shall directly 
intervene in the expectation of effecting any other 
solution of our difficulties than by the return of the 
rebels to their allegiance, I have not the slightest hesi- 
tation in assuring you, that, whatever may be the 
ultimate effect of such intervention, there can be no 



78 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

rational hope of any immediate or early relief from 
the embarrassments and distresses caused by the want 
of cotton, and much less from those caused by the 
curtailment of our markets for foreimi merchandise. 

The people of the Free States will rise up to a man 
to resist any such interference in our domestic affairs, 
let it come in whatever form it may. Nor could it 
probably come m any that would not lead to increased 
alienation and bitterness on both sides, soon to termi- 
nate in war. I think I speak advisedly when I say 
this : for I have seen and talked with multitudes of all 
classes upon the subject, and am familiar with the 
popular feeling as expressed by the press throughout 
the country ; and I have never seen the individual who 
hesitated to avow determined resistance to any such 
intervention, at all hazards of national or individual 
suffering, or of life itself. 

Such a continuance of the war would lead to still 
more resolute and deadly invasion of the Southern 
States, with no such limit in regard to their rights of 
property in slaves mider the Constitution as now pre- 
yails and governs our armies, on the principle of treat- 
ing them as rebellious children rather than as foreign 
foes ; but, on the contrary, the war would then, of ne- 
cessity, be carried on as a foreign war, justifying, and 
demanding of us, the use of all the means of conquer- 
ing our enemies which God and Nature have placed 
in our hands, including that of universal emancipa- 
tion wheresoever our armies could reach, and arming 
the slaves against their masters and thek allies. Nor 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 79 

can it be doubted, that insurrections of the negroes 
(now repressed by their knowledge that the war is 
not now carried on with any view of encouraging 
them in this dhcction, but, on the contrary, with an 
avowed, and, as we are fast becoming convinced, a too 
tender regard for the legal riglits of their masters as 
citizens of the Union,) would, upon such a new phase 
of the struggle, break out more or less extensively 
wherever our armies should appear, or seem to be 
approaching. And such are our inland as well as 
coastwise means of invasion and incursion, and such 
will be our naval armaments on the coast and m the 
rivers, that the cultivation of cotton to any great extent 
must be at least very precarious ; while our priva- 
teers (and we have to thank your Government that 
the right to use that weapon remains to us) will 
render its transportation to Europe much more so. So 
long, therefore, as the war should continue, your 
supplies of cotton would, at the best, be, as we believe, 
very small and uncertain ; while you would, in the mean 
time, have lost the whole market of the Free States for 
your manufactm-es, and have entailed upon your coun- 
try and ours all the lamentable results, for years or ages 
to come, of an intense national hatred and aversion, 
arismg from the feeling on our part of an atrocious 
wrong perpetrated by you, not in the cause of freedom 
or humanity, but for selfish ends against the cause of 
both, and for the peijpetuation of human bondage. 

How many years such a war might last, no one can 
foresee. Twenty millions of freemen, most of them 



80 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

of English blood, with a large mfusion of Irish (burn- 
ing with the spirit of revenge), in a country affording 
abundant resoiu'ces for food and clothing, and muni- 
tions of war on land and at sea, with the modern 
means of coast-defence in abundance witlim their lim- 
its, and spread throughout their territory, could not be 
very soon conquered, if determined to fight : and, in all 
probability, the war would not have terminated before 
the supply of American cotton would be too late to 
rescue from the grave the manufactiu*es and commer- 
cial interests now dependent upon it, and for the 
protection of which it would have been undertaken ; 
while the destruction of the markets of the Free 
States for your goods would not only have been uni- 
versal, but probably would be perpetual. It adds not 
a httle now to the exasperation felt towards England, 
that she has thrown her sympathy and moral aid on 
the side of those who are the sole authors of all this 
trouble and distress to her as well as to us, and 
rclio have always been her worst enemies on this side 
of the water ; and there would be no limits to this 
exasperation, should she go farther in material aid 
to them. 

May God in his mercy avert from you and us the 
calamities of such an interference ! 

Ever faithfully yours, 

Charles G. Loring. 
Edwin W. Field, Esq. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 



VII. 

Boston, August 1, 1862. 

My dear Friend, 

I have, almost unaccoimtably to myself, tlius long 
delayed further reply to your letter. Perhaps the 
explanation might be found partly in apprehension of 
having already exhausted your patience : but I must 
confess to still greater discouragement in the new evi- 
dence, almost daily brought, of the mcreasing aversion 
of your people from us ; and of the absolute foregone 
conclusion, which they seem determmed to adopt, (as 
a matter of will rather than of reason,) of the final 
breaking-up of our Union. This leads me to fear, 
that whatever may be said on our side of the question 
will be of little interest, if it fall not on closed ears. 
It sometimes seems, indeed, as if England, having m a 
great measure composed her ancient feuds with France, 
and deshing some other object of national hatred and 
contempt, was seeking to establish another France on 
this side of the Atlantic. 

But having gone so far towards the completion of my 
answer, and feeling that some, at least, of the remain- 
ing topics are of no less interest to us than most of 
those already touched upon, I will venture this further 
tax upon your indulgence. 

You must not suppose that I differ from you re- 

11 



82 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

specting the right of England to observe the strictest 
neiitrahty in all cases of rebellion arising m foreign 
nations ; or that I fail justly to appreciate the honor 
due to her for her general observance of it, and m so 
extensively and nobly rendering her shores an asylum 
of the oppressed. I have already explained that our 
grief is not that she has, but that she has not, pre- 
served a strict neutrality in our KebeUion. 

In the cases you suggest, of Southern ascendency 
perverting our political institutions, by attempting to 
attach the Free States to the car of Slavery in viola- 
tion of the principles of the Constitution, we should, 
if that were attempted by force of arms, undoubtedly 
rise, and resist it to the death. Our struggle, in that 
case, would be to reinstate the Constitution, truly con- 
strued, in all its lawful authority. Allow me, however, 
to add, in passmg, that, were such avowedly the nature 
of the contest now going on m this country, we could 
not be more surprised or disappointed at fuiding Eng- 
land arraymg herself on the side of oppression and 
slavery, than we have been, and are now, in findmg 
her sympathies enlisted with rebels who are fighting 
for substantially the same cause under a different 
pretext. 

I approach the consideration of the supposed causes 
of the ill-feeling of your countrymen, which seems so 
very general, and of their wish for the dissolution 
of our Union, which you admit to be universal (and 
which, from whatever motives, appears so too evidently 
to admit of serious denial), with a full consciousness 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 83 

of the delicacy of the subject, and with some fear that 
I may be thought to trespass, however unmtentionally, 
upon your friendly indulgence m the treatment of it. 
But I am siu'e that you will not question my sincerity 
in saying, that whatever I may think in regard to cer- 
tain classes of them, or of their motives, I have not a 
momentary doubt of the disinterestedness, ingenuous- 
ness, and honesty of others, who, hke yourself, are 
influenced only by considerations of humanity and 
public policy, and a just regard for our welfare. 

You seem indignant that oiu* people should assign, 
as incentives to the unfriendliness manifested by yours, 
and to their general desii*e for the dissolution of our 
Government, such causes as the blockade, the tariff, 
the want of cotton, a wish to see our national power 
broken down or crippled, and our competition in com- 
merce and manufactures seriously impaked ; and you 
seem to consider that you have proved the imputation 
of them to be unfounded, and therefore insultmg, by 
the suggestion, that otherwise England might well have 
yielded to the temptation of such influences. But 
you surely do not mean to be understood as maintain- 
mg that either or all of these motives, however real 
or unquestioned, would have justified her in the sight 
of the world, or in the eyes of the honest portion of 
her own people, in taking part with the rebels in a war 
against our Government, or hi affording them du-ect 
material aid. The circumstance, therefore, that your 
Government has not declared war, nor officially ren- 
dered such aid, is no proof that your countrymen, as 



84 THE PEESENT EELATIONS BETWEEN 

individuals, have not been influenced by these consid- 
erations. On the other hand, I submit to your can- 
dor, that the evidence, if it exist, of their general 
desire for our overthrow, and of extensive and almost 
milimited aid given by them to the rebels, (by which 
alone they have been enabled thus far to carry on 
the war,) and of a seemingly almost universal s}Tnpa- 
thy with then* cause, affords strong primd facie proof 
that the motives in question have had more or less 
mfluence, unless such desu'e, aid, and sympathy can 
be accounted for by other equally satisfactory causes. 
And you must admit, that if the just and honorable 
motives which actuate you, and others 'like you, in 
your feelings and views, but which only the most 
highly cultivated classes can be supposed to appreciate, 
could be assigned as those influencing your people at 
large in then- feelmgs towards us in this struggle, they 
never yet have been so assigned, (at least to any such 
extent as to attract our notice,) or as those by which 
your press and Parliament and public orators profess 
to be actuated. 

How can we be justly complained of for believing 
these influences to prevail throughout your land, when 
they constitute so large a portion of the staple for the 
abuse showered upon us by your press, in public 
demonstrations, and in private correspondence ? 

Is not our Government, m yoiu: leading jom-nals 
and reviews and in pubhc speeches, denounced as an 
abeady overgrown mob, under the control of vulgar 
manners, passion, and brutality, — dangerous to the 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 85 

peace and security of others 1 Is not the American 
Union prochiimed to be a nuisance and a menace to 
all other governments ^ Are we not abused in the 
most scurrilous terms for our tariff (necessarily raised 
by the exigencies of the war) as bemg designedly hos- 
tile to England, and a justifiable cause of anger, if not 
of war \ And has not every conceivable appeal to argu- 
ment, prejudice, interest, and passion, been urged in the 
press, in Parliament, and everywhere, to induce your 
Government to declare the blockade insufficient, and 
to disregard it, and to mtervene for the help of the 
rebels I And are we, under such circumstances, to be 
censui'ed for believing that such are the real sentiments 
of, at the least, a large portion of your people ? 

Now, my dear friend, at the hazard of your distrust 
of my candor and intelligence, though, I hope, of no- 
thing more, I must frankly say, that we believe all 
these motives to have had more or less influence 
in bringing about the unhappy alienation, so painful 
now, and, as I fear, so portentous of evil in the future. 
And a moment's reflection must, I thmk, satisfy you, 
that, in so doing, I am not attributmg to your country- 
men " contemptible and villanous motives," as you 
term them ; or, if they are to be so accounted, at least 
not more contemptible and villanous than such as haunt 
humanity everywhere, and must be mcluded in all 
general estimates of individual or national character, 
or motives of action. 

We all know that there is no motive or spring of 
human action more exciting and more endurmg than 



86 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

the spirit of competition or rivalry. It is sufficient 
to prompt the greatest efforts, and awaken many 
ungenerous sentiments, where it is merely personal, 
and where to excel another is the only object. It be- 
comes more intense when important or supposed vital 
material mterests are involved ; and still more so when 
reputation, pride, and self-respect are also mingled in 
the stake. Now, these mfluences are at work upon 
our two nations m a mamier and to a degree before 
unknown in history, and tending to produce corre- 
spondingly excitmg effects upon the muids of your 
countrymen, m contemplation of then- relations to us. 

For many long years, — so many, that the present 
" memory of man runneth not to the contrary," — Eng- 
land has been at the head of the world m commerce, 
manufactures, wealth, and naval power ; claimmg an 
almost undisputed mastery of the seas, and exerting a 
correspondmg influence over all other nations ; while, 
at the same time, she has asserted a no less pre-eminent 
position m mental, moral, and religious culture. The 
inevitable residt has been, an exalted sense of national 
superiority (may I not say, self-complacency?) per- 
vading the mass of her people ; a sentiment bred in 
the bone, for the existence of which they cannot be 
deemed morally accountable, however much so some 
of them may be for its ostentatious display, while 
others wear it so modestly and courteously as to give 
to it the seeming of a graceful virtue. This elevation 
and preponderance among the nations, her past and 
apparently unapproachable superiority m her military 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 87 

and commercial marine, and in the extent and variety 
of her markets, secured by colonial dependencies en- 
circling the globe, seemed to place beyond all hazard 
of loss or competition. 

But within a very short period, and almost as by 
a sudden revelation, England has perceived that the 
United States are become her equal iii population 
(I, of course, refer to the United Kmgdom only, not 
to the Colonies) ; possess at least an equal amount 
of commercial tomiage, competing with hers all over 
the globe ; and have built up a multiplicity of manu- 
factures, which, chiefly begun since men of middle 
age came mto bemg, are already creating at home an 
almost entire independence of foreign nations for the 
necessaries and some of the luxuries of life ; and even 
now compete with some of her manufactures in foreign 
ports, — nay, with some even in her own. She perceives, 
too, that this young Republic possesses a territory un- 
equalled by that of any other nation in extent, and m 
diversity of climate, (Russia being no exception, takmg 
climate into account,) and occupied by a people not 
inferior to any other in enterprise, mechanical inven- 
tion, general intelligence, and aptitude for the arts, 
whether of peace or war, — a population spreading 
over it in a ratio of increase never before witnessed 
or imagined, and which, unchecked, would soon be- 
come numerically greater than that of any other nation 
of Christian civilization on earth. 

Now, my dear friend, I am but supposing English- 
men mortal, and swayed by the feelings common to 



88 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

humanity everywhere, when I say, that it is natural, 
nay unavoidable, that, upon awakening to a sense of 
such competition in all that most nearly concerns theu' 
national prosperity, power, and pride, they should, at 
the first notice of these facts, apprehend a degree of 
danger to their own commercial and manufacturing 
interests, and a possible rivalry in national strength 
and mfluence : and, under these impressions, it is per- 
fectly natural for them to believe that they see m the 
destruction of oiu* National Government, by the break- 
ing-up of our Union, not only immediate and entire 
relief from all such apprehensions, but also (what 
coidd not be less an object of mterest or deske) an 
immediate and extensive increase of their own com- 
mercial prosperity, by taking from us for a time, if 
not for ever, or by sharmg Avith us at least, the carry- 
ing-trade of the South ; — a great promotion of their 
manufacturing interests, in limiting the outlets for our 
productions, by either monopolizing, or enjo}ing on 
equal terms with us, its markets ; — and various great 
opportunities for profitable enterprise, which such a 
revolution on this continent (probably to be followed 
for years to come by other revolutions and internal 
disturbances of greater or less extent) would mevitably 
present to a neutral nation already at the head of the 
Commerce, manufactures, and w^ealth of the world. 

I speak of your countrymen's now mvahening to this 
state of things as to a sudden revelation : because every 
thing in your current literature and gazettes, and in the 
conversation of your countrymen, has proved, that, until 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 89 

of late, there Avas among the mass an ahnost eiitu'e 
want of knowledge of this country and its resources ; 
owmg, as I doubt not, to theu' general mdifference, 
if not aversion, to every thing American, which I 
not only perceived, but which was more than once 
very frankly admitted, in my intercourse with them. 
The remembrance is quite fresh of the ak of some- 
times ill-concealed and amusing mcredulity with which 
answers to mquiries as to the extent of our terri- 
tories, and especially of our seacoasts, and concern- 
mg oiu" tomiage, manufactures, population, &c., were 
received, only nme years ago, by persons (who could 
not be accounted below the average of your well-edu- 
cated people) whom I met on the Continent and in 
England. I doubt not that I was, in several instances, 
considered a veritable American Munchausen in my 
statements so given, although they were carefully kept 
within the truth. 

This war, so du-ectly affecting the material uiterests 
of your countrymen, and being intrmsically of deep 
interest, has suddenly drawn attention to American 
afFau's, and aroused a general desire for information 
respecting them. That which you get from some of 
your national agitators, actmg with the aid and under 
the inspiration of Southern gold ; still more that which 
comes du'ectly from unscrupulous and lymg secession- 
ists, who have em-olled your press m thek service, — 
is in danger of being perverted no less to your mjury, 
as we think, than to our own. 

The causes above enumerated, I believe to be (with- 

12 



90 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

out further reproach to your countrymen than in 
accountmg them human) a sufficient groundworlc for 
the national helief, now so universally entertained and 
expressed, that the separation of the Free from the 
Slave States is inevitable. This is with you all a fore- 
gone conclusion. Is not " the wish" hoioever uncon- 
sciously to some of you, '^ father to the thought''? 

I doubt not that there are many, I hope very many, 
among you, of broader views, whose voices may yet be 
heard to stem the torrent of public opinion, which 
seems rapidly hurrymg both nations mto a state of 
settled enmity. I should hope that there are many 
who otherwise would see, in the rising prosperity and 
power of a people of the same blood, literature, reli- 
gion, and love of liberty, vast elements of mutual and 
combined power, of progressive ci\dlization and free- 
dom, coupled with a positive increase of all valuable 
mterests, material as well as intellectual and spiritual ; 
but who, through misapprehension of our institutions 
and our social and national condition, deshe the separa- 
tion of the Union from other and higher considerations 
than national selfishness or pride. But it is requiring 
of us too much, I think, when you ask us to believe 
that the mass of your merchants, manufacturers, and 
people at large, are above the reach of such influ- 
ences as I have suggested, however willing or able 
they may be to keep their effects within the control 
of national law, and of a just regard for the rights of 
a foreign nation, with which they have no other cause 
of quarrel, and which has so recently extended to them 
the hand of cordial friendship. 



GEEAT BEITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 91 

But, my dear friend, I do not believe that these 
motives and inliuences, however strong, are by any 
means the sole or the chief cause ""of the ahenation of 
your people from oiu"s, and of the bitterness attending 
it. I believe that there is one lying deeper, ever 
rankling in the minds of yoiu- ruling classes and of 
those nearest to them, and in the minds of all' classes 
of your people who sympathize with them, — a cause 
far more effective and far more permanently danger- 
ous : I mean, hatred of our democratic mstitutions, as 
being m themselves mtrinsically demoralizmg, and of 
pernicious and dangerous mfluence in the use made 
of them in domestic assaults upon the Constitution of 
your own Government. These mstitutions, I fear, 
some, even of our friends among you, begin to hold 
in distrust, under the wretched, I had almost said vol- 
untary, delusion avowed by many of your leading 
men and presses, that this Rebellion may be taken as a 
final test of the capacity of man for self-government ; — 
a clear demonstration of the insufficiency of such a gov- 
ernment for its own maintenance ; — proof, m short, 
that the Great E-epublic was but a bubble that has 
burst. They fancy that they behold this, instead of 
seeing the Rebellion to be, what it most plainly is, 
neither more nor less than a repetition, in another 
form, of the old contest between despotism and slavery 
on one side, and freedom and humanity on the other, — 
a contest arising, indeed, under a republican form of 
government, hut so arising only beccmse the desjjotism 
and slavery were an accursed iwrtion of its inherit- 



92 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

cmce, loltJi lohich it has had to struggle from its hirth, 
and Avliich is now seeking the mastery, to bury free- 
dom and humanity in rums. As well might it be 
said that the human constitution is unfitted for the 
functions for which God created it, because some of 
the race are struggling to wrench from their vitals a 
cancer inherited as a portion of theh mother's blood. 
My unfaltering trust in God is, that as m human suf- 
fering is found not only the test of the most vigorous 
and enduring vitality, but also the means of the high- 
est spiritual elevation ; so will this Republic stand forth, 
when this hard struggle is over, a clear manifestation 
of the unconquerable vitality of a free government m 
the hands of intelligent freemen ; of an elevated loyalty 
and confidence in the hearts of the people, which 
nothing else could have insphed. 

I am aware, my dear friend, that this is a delicate 
subject, even with men of yom' liberal and broad 
Avays of thinking, whose concurrence, nevertheless, m 
this view, I may not anticipate ; but I know that you 
will bear with me kindly m the frank expression of 
thoughts and opinions, the concealment of which, in 
such a correspondence, would be disingenuous, and 
unworthy of us both. 

No one thmg surprised me so much, in my inter- 
coiu'se with your countrymen at home or abroad, as 
their general profound loyalty (for I can use no 
other phrase) to your aristocracy. I did, indeed, occa- 
sionally meet with some disposed to disparage the 
institution, and complain of its influences ; but these 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 93 

were exceptions. At other times, I was astonished at 
what seemed to me a sort of infatnation in the deo-ree 
of reverence with^which the nobility were regarded. 
I was soon satisfied that not merely their claims to the 
prestige of a rnling class, as a matter of indisputable 
birthright, were cheerfully accorded ; but that a large 
portion, if not a great majority, of your people felt 
themselves positively elevated by the existence of such 
a class among them m the capacity of rulers. I found 
that other American travellers felt the same conviction 
as my own. Do not mistake me. Observe, that I am 
not now questioning the reasonableness or utility or 
dignity of the aristocratic institution, or of the popular 
sentiment regardmg it : I only affirm the existence of 
that sentiment, and that it is an element affectmsr our 
national relations. 

You know that the modern boast of Eno-lishmen is, 
that their country is governed by gentlemen, — a 
boast that can hardly be felt, or at least uttered, 
without more or less of implication that other coun- 
tries are not, or may not be, so governed : and I sup- 
pose you will concede, that although the ultimate 
political power of England may really reside in the 
middling class, representing the great bulk of her 
capital and wealth, the ostensibly ruling class is (and 
of present inevitable necessity must be) mcdnly, if not 
exclusively^ of nohle birth ; and that this does not arise 
more from the claims of the aristocracy, and their long- 
inherited prestige, than from the equally long-inherited 
belief, prejudice, sentiment, or whatever it may be 



94 THE PRESENT EELATIONS BETWEEN 

called, of the people at large, that it ought to be, or 
must be so, and that thek own dignity and honor and 
safety requu'e that it should be so. ^ Indeed, looking 
at the fact that so many generations have been born 
and educated to think and feel that they must be ruled 
by those having over them the authority of birthright, 
and considermg also the national grandeur to which 
they have attamed under rulers thus derived, it is 
perfectly natural that the people of England should 
believe and feel that their national safety and pros- 
perity depend upon the continuance of this fountam 
of authority ; and it is much to their credit that they 
should be satisfied and pleased to be governed by 
those whose bhth and breeduig may seem to secure 
that they will always be gentlemen : of which class, 
according to their notions of it, the noble, alike by 
mheritance of claim on one side and the acknowi- 
edgment of it on the other, is naturally the complete 
exemplar. Both the rulers, therefore, and the ruled, 
on your side of the water, are apt to view with jeal- 
ousy and distrust, mingled more or less with aversion 
and contempt, a people whose Government is in the 
hands of the " vulgar majority " (to use the phrase 
which your people, and, of late, the slaveocracy ^ are 
so fond of using) ; where, although public offices, in 
the present imperfect though rapidly advancing state 
of general cultivation, are too often in the hands of 
politicians more ignoble from character than any bhth 
could make them, and the Government occasionally 
seems to rock under then* low and selfish mfluences, it 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 95 

is still found to have inherent fh-mness and strcng-th 
enough to secure, under all ordinary circumstances, 
the peace, prosperity, and advancing intelligence of 
the people at large, beyond any form of government 
ever before tried. 

It is, we believe, this hitherto apparent proof of the 
sufficiency of a Republican Government, founded on 
universal suffrage, for all the ends of national peace, 
prosperity, and power, — and the imagination or 
belief that its seemmg success may be used or per- 
verted m your own country to disprove the necessity 
or expediency of ruling classes w^ho inherit political 
authority as a bhthright (and so may operate as a 
danger or menace to one of the most cherished 
institutions of your affections and pride, as the lead- 
ing nation of the earth), — which have entered most 
deeply into the hearts, not only of those classes, but 
of all classes of your countrymen sympathizing with 
them ; and, combining with the motives and interests 
before suggested, cause them to hail with undisguised 
delight, and to accept as a foregone conclusion, the 
prostration of our national power, and " the burstmg 
of the Republican bubble," by the separation of our 
Union. 

It certainly cannot be denied, and I have no disposi- 
tion to conceal, that, in so far as national diplomacy is 
concerned, the Government of England, for some years 
previous to this Rebellion, has, with some notable ex- 
ceptions, stood in favorable contrast with that of the 
United States in regard to gentlemanly deportment. 



96 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

We have had, it is true, too much reason, at times, to 
be mortified by exhibitions of rudeness, arrogance, and 
want of breedmg, m some of our pubhc men, — a 
fault supposed by you to flow from the rule of the 
" vulgar majority." But it is to be remembered, that, 
during the periods of such discreditable exhibitions, 
Southern influence was in the ascendant, and exercised 
all the appointing p)Ower. This was the sole inspha- 
tion and exponent of the hatred towards England, and 
contempt of all foreign powers, which were mani- 
fested in the language of the Senate and the press, 
and in unscrupulous acts of filibustering, culmmating 
in the villanous Ostend Manifesto, in which the mise- 
rable, corrupt, and imbecile Buchanan, our minister 
at your Court, bore so conspicuous a part ; and for 
which, a celebrated Southern senator, now a leader hi 
the Rebellion, said in my presence, at a dinner-table 
several years since, that " he was willing to stump the 
South, uniting with it a war with England, for which 
the South was cdways ready'' 

How little did I dream then that I should see, in 
a few short years, the proud and truly noble aris- 
tocracy of England stretchmg out its hand to grasp 
that of the ignoble bastard aristocracy of the South 
(having no other foundation than property in human 
flesh), as in protection of a common mterest, and ready 
to rush into a war for the destruction of those who, on 
this side of the water, had long been England's only 
and fast friends ; — and, worst of all, to hear her peo- 
ple cry Amen ! 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 97 

But, my dear friend, while I freely admit that the 
form and nature of your Government tends more cer- 
tainly to secure, in her foreign representation and in 
her diplomacy, the mestimable quality of gentlemanly 
bearing and courtesy, it must be borne in mind, that it 
as inevitably tends to produce a sense of supposed 
superiority over others, apt to become more or less 
apparent and irritating, and a sensitiveness to ima- 
ginary insidt, or want of due respect, not less danger- 
ous to a good understanding with foreign nations ; and 
I believe this to have had no inconsiderable influence 
in the diplomatic intercourse of our countries. 

And this brings me to your accusations against us for 
a general want of gentlemanly deportment towards Eng- 
land, and especially m the case of the " Trent," " that 
miserable affair," as you justly term it ; which, though 
presentmg opportunity for the establishment of prmci- 
ples of mternational law of the highest moment, settled 
nothmg but your seeming willingness to go to war 
wdth us upon the fhst opportunity for a pretext to do 
so ; and so planted a thorn to fester in our hearts, 
which you have as yet shown no chsposition to with- 
draw. 

You ask, " If INIr. Seward felt as he said he did, 
why not instantly disclaim AVelles and the other 
approvers of the act^ AVhy, by silence at least, en- 
Courage all the lawyers in your country to compose 
arguments the other way ? AVhy lock up the two knaves 
who, he admits now, were still under our flag, and 
keep them till demand made ^ It was more like a low 

13 



98 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

attorney^ than a gentleman^ to whisper to his chents the 
President and United States, ' We are in the wrong ; it 
is trespass : but let us wait, and see if England issues 
a writ,' " And you say, that some of your people 
add to our speech, " We have buUied her often 
before without resistance : let us try it on agam till 
she complains." 

Now, every one must know, who knows any thing 
of public opinion and sentiment in this country, as 
appearmg m the press, in public discussions, and pri- 
vate conversation, that on the reception of the intel- 
Hgence of the " Trent " affau', and for some weeks 
afterwards, there was much real doubt concerning the 
law applicable to the case ; and also whether, under its 
peculiar circumstances, and the notorious antecedents 
of England m taking men by thousands from Ameri- 
can vessels at sea to man her ships-of-war, [the right 
to do which she has ever since cautiously refused to 
expressly abandon^) she would claim the redelivery 
of these conspicuous traitors, indisputably known to 
be, and ostentatiously coming as such, when received 
on board of the " Trent," and so attempting to avail 
themselves of her flag to aid in the destruction of their 
Government, until then m most friendly relations with 
her own. 

You compliment our lawyers as skilled m inter- 
national law. I wish I could consider them justly 
entitled to be so considered. But, however that may 
be, very few of them were found, after nearly half 
a century of profound peace, to have any ready know- 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 99 

ledge of that special branch of it which relates to 
prize. Now, all the first 02nnions, both of lawyers 
and statesmen^ were that Gapt. Wilkes was legally 
right ill his proceedings, and the public mind was 
universally so impressed. In a little while, as the 
examination proceeded and discussions took place, 
doubts began to be expressed on one point after 
another, and especially upon the lawfulness of tak- 
ing the traitors out of the vessel before sendmg 
her in for adjudication ; and one at least of our 
most eminent jurists elaborately maintained, and still 
maintains, that it was right to do so, and that no 
authority or recognized prmciple can be adduced to 
the contrary, inasmuch as no adjudication for or 
against the vessel could affect the question of the 
personal rights or statiis of the prisoners, * which 
must be determined by other proceedings, in which 
her owners could have no interest, and no relation to 
them. 

But the opinion soon began to prevail, that although 
the visitation and search were clearly lawful, and the 
vessel would have been adjudged subject to condem- 
nation, or at least to lawful detention, if she had been 
brought in for trial, nevertheless, Capt. Wilkes had 
no la^^^ul authority to constitute himself the judge of 
the facts and the law, and act upon his own decision 
of them ; that he therefore erred in taking the pris- 
oners out and suffering the vessel to proceed, mstead 
of sending her into port ; and that, on this ground, 

England might lawfully demand then* redelivery. But 
L.of CT 



100 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

there was a no less general and entire conviction, that 
England, although having the technical right to object 
to the procedure on this ground, could not, m vicAV of 
the facts and of her past conduct and relations to this 
country, reasonably complain of the omission of a mere 
form, where the facts were undeniable, and the seizure, 
if not altogether, yet, so far as the prisoners w^ere con- 
cerned, was so clearly justifiable ; and esj)ecially when 
that form was waived to our own prejudice, and for 
the sole purpose of accommodation to the owners 
of the vessel and her passengers, and of evincing the 
utmost delicacy to her flag. 

Now, it was while this doubt and uncertainty were 
pervadmg the public mind, and our lawyers and states- 
men were searching for precedents and discussing 
principles, and before the remotest possibility of hear- 
ing any thmg of your "siews upon the subject, that Mr. 
Seward, for the purpose of preventing all misconstruc- 
tion on your part, and all apprehension of any dispo- 
sition on the part of our Government to trench upon 
the legal rights, or upon the most scrupulous regard 
for the honor, of your flag, sent an especial despatch 
to Mr. Adams, with orders to read it to Earl Russell. 
In this he stated that the proceedings of Capt. Wilkes 
were not in pursuance of any instructions from his 
Government ; that he (jNIr. Seward) was desirous that 
they should not be so considered ; and that we were 
disposed and prepared to adjust the matter, if any 
difference of opinion existed, as such a question should 
be adjusted between two friendly nations. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 101 

The President and INIr. Seward did not therefore 
wait, while thinkmg us clearly in the wrong, to first 
see what the other party would do. They waited 
under the opinions of the lawyers and statesmen of 
the country that you had committed tlie first offence, 
and that we were clearly in the right, excejjt in a tnere 
matter of form ^ w awed for your benefit, concernhuj 
the mode of i^rovhuj facts which no one could de- 
ny ; — with no belief or apprehension that England, 
upon a knowledge of them, could regard the procedure 
as any insult or slight to her flag ; — and after having 
taken the usual and proper steps to prevent the possi- 
bility of her so considermg it, and for ascertaining, by 
mutual discussion, what duty and national honor re- 
quired of both nations under such circumstances. 

Mr. Seward does not admit, as you seem to suppose, 
that we were unqualifiedly, or the only party, in the 
wrong. He maintams that the first offence against 
the law of nations was committed by the " Trent," in 
attempting to transport these rebels, who, worse than 
soldiers in arms, were "seeking the protection of your 
flag on an errand for the destruction of their own 
Government. All he admits is, that the taking of 
them out of your vessel at sea was a violation of that 
law, and that, this stej) being in its nature irremediable, 
because the validity of her proceedings could not be 
legally investigated or determined, by reason of the 
omission to send her in for adjudication, you had 
the right to require the redelivery of the captives ; 
and we were jyrecluded from stcmdimj upon any cdleged 



102 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

prior wrong committed in her taking them on hoards 
since we had abandoned the only means of ascertaui- 
ing or j^^ovhig that any such wrong had been com- 
mitted. 

I must therefore, my dear friend, consider the im- 
putation that our President or minister behaved with 
disingenuousness or the cmming of a low attorney, 
as imphed in your questions, or that there was a 
want of gentlemanly frankness, or of promptitude to 
redress an admitted wrong, as wholly unjustified by 
the facts ; with which, therefore, I cannot but think 
you were not familiar while penning them. 

But how stands the accomit of England with us on 
the score of gentlemanly bearing and conduct ? 

At the same time, and I believe on the same day, 
when the above-named despatch of Mr. Seward Avas 
written, your Ministry^ in entire ignorance whether 
there was any ground to siipj^ose that the slightest 
wrong or indignity had been authorized by ours, or 
even intentionally committed by Capt. Wilkes, and with- 
out waiting a moment for possible opportunity for 
disavowal or explanation, were inditing a despatch to 
Lord Lyons, demanding, in absolute terms, the surren- 
der of the traitors as an ultimatum, aiid an apology 
for their seizure (terms requked of inferiors or sub- 
ordinates in position, and never among equals, at least 
until after opportunity for a mutual understanding and 
the failure of efforts to secm-e one), — a jjrocedure 
between two civilized natiotis, it is believed, wholly 
without parallel in history ; and they accompanied this 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 103 

demand by enormous military and naval preparations 
for its prompt enforcement, and tliis, too, against a 
nation known to be struggling for life with a gigantic 
internal rebellion. My dear friend, do you wonder 
that an American's blood tingles to the tips of his 
fingers as he writes this simple statement of facts ? 

I submit it to your own enlightened sense of right 
and wrong, and yom* own honest heart, to decide 
whether the Ministry of England, in this transaction, 
preserved her prestige of gentlemmily deportment. 

It is fortunate for us, and I think for you too, and 
perhajDS for the world, all of whom might otherwise 
have been involved in wars for many sad years to come, 
that our inability to stand upon the ground that the 
first wrong was committed by you, because of our hav- 
ing thrown away the only means of establishing it, 
allowed of the surrender without confessed national 
humiliation and disgrace ; but we have been brought 
too near to the border of them not to feel most keenly 
the will on your part to inflict them. Henceforth let 
Englishmen remember, that, however England may 
have heretofore imagined that America had treated 
her rudely or insultingly, the debt has been more than 
cancelled. 

You say that Europe has decided in your favor in 
this affair. I think you are exceedingly mistaken 
in supposing so. She has indeed so decided on the 
question of our right to take the knaves out of your 
keeping, and no doubt with great satisfaction, as the 
decision defuiitively binds you to a principle of interna- 



104 THE PEESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

tional law which your country had for many long years 
set at nought m practice (at least so far as impressment 
was concerned), if not denied in theory ; and perhaps 
also she thinks that this act may be hereafter esteemed 
a precedent for rights of neutrals, which have been 
always claimed by the Continental nations, but which 
England has never conceded. But I believe the dis- 
approbation of the manner in which the claim for 
redress* was made, the ultimatum and the apology, and 
the armed hand extended to enforce them, have excited 
as much disapprobation abroad as they have in this 
country, although, of course, not accompanied by the 
same sense of wrong. 

But, my dear friend, there is one other most dis- 
agreeable feature of this " miserable affair" to be taken 
into account in determining the question of relatively 
gentlemanly deportment between England and Amer- 
ica. The despatch from Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams, to 
which I have alluded, was read, as you and we now 
know, by Mr. Adams to Earl E,ussell and Lord Pal- 
merston, immediately after its receipt. At the time of 
its reception, the despatch to Lord Lyons, stating the 
ultimatum and demand for an apology, had gone for- 
ward, and all England was lashing itself into a rage 
on the ground that a gross and intentional insult to 
her national flag had been offered ; and the Ministry 
was pushing forwards naval and military armaments 
in hot haste, in evident furtherance and support of 
this excitement. It soon began to be rumored, that 
such a despatch, disavowmg any authority on the 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 105 

part of oiir Government to Capt. Wilkes for his pro- 
ceedings, disclaiming any intentional insult to the 
English Hag, and proposing a conciliatory arrangement 
of the matter, had been received by our minister. 
But the " Post " (Lord Palmerston's paper, and the 
supposed official authority, so far as newspapers are 
concerned) immediately hastened to jmhllsh conspicu- 
ously what was justly considered an official, explicit 
contradiction of the news ; admitting, indeed, that a 
despatch had been received and read, but denying that 
it related at all to the " Trent'' affair. And Lord Pal- 
merston and Earl Russell permitted this denial and 
falsehood to pass uncontradicted for three iveeks ; during 
tvhich time the English pid)lic was continually goaded 
into increasing fury against this country, not only by 
the instigations of the press, but by the fact that the 
ministry were in the mean time pressing forward, warlike 
preparations without pause or abatement. We have 
never, as yet, heard any explanation of this matter, 
nor have we learned that any inquiry, even in Parlia- 
ment, was made concerning it, though long since 
notorious and micontradicted ; and, if this cannot be 
explained, may we not ask, where were the gentlemen 
in this case I 

But enough of this. I gladly quit a subject so pain- 
ful to every feeling involved in the love of my own 
country, and in affection and respect for yours ; and 
wish to Heaven that I could for ever blot it from my 
memory. 

14 



106 THE TRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

With regard to the attempts made to excite the 
anger of your people towards us on account of our 
tariff, nothing can be more unreasonable. The Mor- 
rill Tariff was one clearly made necessary by the 
increased and enormously increasing expenditures of 
our Government ; was in conformity to the ordinary 
means resorted to by all Governments for that pur- 
pose in case of need ; and Avas quite as favorable, I am 
urformed, to England, as that established by a recent 
treaty between her and France. And the Tariff bill 
last enacted, so bitterly and scurrilously denounced, was 
not only needed as a means of revenue, but was made 
necessary hy the internal taxes imi^osed on our manu- 
factures^ in order that the relative value of imported 
goods should remain the same, and that no advan- 
tage should be given to them over our own ; and I 
believe you will find that nothing more has been 
done. 

You seem to rely very confidently on a test of your 
rectitude, in all the relations between our respective 
nations, which, I confess, seems to me somewdiat nov- 
el ; but which, if a true one, must, in this case, produce 
the strange result of proving both right and both wrong. 
You say, " Another test for you. You can rarely find 
a guilty man without some crushing consciousness 
of his guilt. Most unquestionixbly, we, one and all 
of us, here, believe we have been thoroughly with- 
out double-dealing or impropriety towards you. We 
believe the truth of the negative plea of Not guilty ; 
l)ut we affirm ourselves entitled to the credit of un- 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 107 

flincliing loyalty under circumstances involving us in 
appalling trials, &c., &c." 

Such is the apphcation of the test on your side. 
How does it work on ours I I assure you, that I do 
not know, and have not seen the American man, 
woman, or child, competent to think or feel upon the 
subject, nor heard of one, that does not fully believe 
and feel to the very bottom of the heart, that the 
people of England have behaved towards us, through- 
out this Rebellion, in the most unkind and unfriendly, 
not to say most unjust, manner possible, short of 
open war ; and not only that their sympathies have 
been, and are, with the rebels, but that they have ren- 
dered, and still render, to them all the material aid in 
their power ; and that they generally view us with an 
unconcealed hatred and pretended contempt, wholly 
unlooked for, and for which no reasonable cause 
has been, if any can be, assigned. 

I am thankful, my dear friend, that this my labor 
in defence of my comitry, and in attempted correction 
of the misconceptions and misapprehensions so ex- 
tensively pervading your own, is at length brought 
to a close. The work has caused me greater pain 
than labor ; for I can truly say, that no pubhc event 
dm-ing my life, and no private grief excepting those 
of domestic and kindi-ed bereavement, has ever caused 
to me the heartfelt sorrow with which I contemplate 
the conduct of England to my own country in this 
hour of her trial. 

I hope that I have done your countrymen and Gov- 



108 THE PRESENT EELATIONS BETWEEN 

eminent no injustice in any views I have presented ; 
and shall he much relieved if it can be shown that 
our complaints are unfounded. In any event, how- 
ever, it is well that you, who entertain so clear and 
decided views on your side, should, at least, under- 
stand those taken on ours ; and, if our friendly discus- 
sion should only enable us mutually the better " to 
see oursels as ithers see us," it will not have been 
wholly in vain. 

With sincerest wishes that the clouds now hang- 
ing over the future relations of our countries may 
soon be dispersed, and that we may be restored 
to the mutual amity, respect, and good-will which 
seemed to characterize them a short time ago, I re- 
mam 

Ever faitlifully, and in all circumstances, 

Yoiu' friend, 

Charles G. Loring. 
Edwin W. Field, Esq. 

P. S. — It was not until after the di-aught of this 
letter had been placed in the hands of the copyist that 
I saw Count Gasparin's " America before Europe," 
which I sent to you a few days ago. The similarity of 
some of the views presented in this correspondence to 
his leads me to make this statement ; as I might per- 
haps otherwise be thought guilty of plagiarism. Had 
I seen the book earlier, I should perhaps have saved 
myself and you some labor by referring to it, instead 
of writmg myself on several topics. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 109 

The delay in forwarding this letter arose from 
my finding it, when copied, too long and mmute for 
the patience of any one ; and I re-di-anghted considera- 
ble portions for the sake of condensation, and omitted 
between one and two sheets. You will, therefore, feel 
grateful for the delay. 



110 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 



VIII. 

36, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, 
23d September, 1862. 

My dear Friend, 

I have delayed acknowledgment and observation on 
your letters till I had received the entire of the series. 
Your last reached me only a few days ago. While it 
would be unbecoming in me to offer nothing in reply 
to arguments so elaborate and so carefully prepared, I 
cannot imagine that you expect or desire me, or that it 
could be useful for me to do so at any length. I feel 
it indeed very difficult and painful to me to write at 
all upon the subject, because, all-absorbing in interest 
as are its events, your war, after all your explanation, 
still seems to me a war on the part of the North, at 
present, so worse than aimless, and to be causing, by 
its excitement, such passion and fanaticism towards all 
the world, that I am quite sick at heart to think of it. 
I and my wife have, you know, many and most dear 
friends in your State and in New York. Scarce a 
letter comes from any of them but seems to my fami- 
ly circle (dispassioned, certainly, in their judgment 
on such a point) the letter almost of a madman. One 
such is just now before me, from a man you know 
well, — one most deservedly of, I may say, European 
reputation. Before he became infatuated, as I deem 
it, with the passion war breeds, he was as moderate. 



GEEAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. Ill 

tolerant, and wise a man as I know. Here is an ex- 
tract from his letter : 

" I remember I am an enthnsiast and fanatic by 
nature ; and I remember that I am writing to an Eng- 
lishman, — business England : yet I must tell you that 
I cannot but regard this [the war] as the most sublime 
and beneficent step the world has made since the death 
of Christ, — a step that will do more for the true phi- 
tosophy of Government, and that of Justice and of 
Liberty, than all that have gone before. . . . But what 
is to be the end ? God knows : I don't ; and I don't 
care. . . . For my part, I shall be glad to see Davis take 
Washington, and England and France recognize the 
Confederacy, if this is necessary to put a million of 
men in camps of instruction this fall. I am more and 
more absorbed in the war, and careless of any thing 
beyond it. So I trust it is to be Avith all of us. An- 
other year, and we shall have done with this miserable 
skirmishing, and really gird ourselves for war. Either 
that, or, through a darker night than that of the 
French Revolution, we shall commit national suicide." 
I should be bitterly ashamed if it did not make me 
miserable to read such letters coming from those I 
love ; so miserable, that it sickens me to write about 
them. 

In answering you, therefore, I shall not enter again 
into those matters which are transitory, and which I 
trust will soon be forgotten : I mean the supposed 
insults thrown by the English people on you of the 
North. I am sure this nation, as a nation, has meant 



112 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

no insult ; and, as between nations as well as between 
men, a distinct national avowal to that effect ought to 
suffice. What you say as to Lord Russell's suppres- 
sion of Mr. Adams's despatch, I cannot understand ; 
but it is clearly a matter I am incompetent to discuss. 
All I can say is, that Lord Russell has always been a 
most honorable man, but that his conduct in that 
matter does not look like it, if you are accurate. 

In what I do say, I shall speak clearly and undis-* 
guisedly, knowing that nothing less would be hono- 
rable or useful, and that you wish me to do so ; and 
I shall say exactly what and all that I think. I would 
fii'st repeat, that I am not the person, by study or 
occupation, to deal with such questions from this side 
the Atlantic ; though, out of our friendship, and as the 
person here whom you have addressed, I cannot re- 
frain from writing upon them when you call on me. 

I told you before, the doctrines of political economy 
as expounded here, and not by your Prof. Carey, 
have become the guiding faith of our people ; and we 
believe, the more rich and great nations there are in 
the world, the more good customers and clients for us. 
We believe (to use a good paradox of a dear old Eng- 
lish friend), what you Americans do not thoroughly 
believe (I wish you did) ; viz., that higness is not 
greatness. 

But the great cause of the most remarkable change 
of feeling which has come across the English within 
the last eight months has been the utter repugnance 
caused here, in every mail, woman, and child able to 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 113 

reason, by the leading- argument and view expounded 
by you and by all your statesmen; viz., that there is 
a special binding force in your v^^ritten Constitution, 
whereby it is to be hinding to all eternity on the in- 
habitants of every State whose ancestors agreed to it, 
in times however remote, unless the majority of the 
other States consent to let them out of such agree- 
ment. 

You say truly, that the English cannot understand 
your Constitution, and that this view is perhaps of too 
technical and artificial a nature for any but an Ameri- 
can to understand. It is more than that : it is to us 
of a most repulsive nature. The Liberals of Europe 
believe in the right and duty of rebellion (under fit 
provocation and reason, mind : there I should go any 
length you could desire), be the Constitution of the 
State written or unwritten. Further, I cannot com- 
prehend how the fact of there being litera scripta can 
make the smallest difference. Writing only makes 
the evidence of an agreement clearer. Your States 
were first colonized under charters. Each of these 
charters was a contract between the Government and 
every one who settled under it ; and, contract not- 
withstanding, still it was the colonists' duty, to the 
interests of themselves, their posterity, and all man- 
kind, to throw off the charter (or, if no charter, then 
their allegiance) as soon as they were unjustly go- 
verned, and were strong enough to throw it off 
successfully. And it was the duty of the lovers of 
liberty here to feel, and they did feel and say (and, 

15 



114 THE TRESEXT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

thank God, in those comparatively dark times of our 
history they were not sent to any Fort Lafayette for 
saying), that England was doing a gross and grievous 
wrong in trying to retain them as suhjects. You speak 
of consciousness of guilt in an ac^cused people as a 
novel ])roof to he looked for in cases of mternational 
ditference. There is an instance of its existence ; 
hut this is hy the hye. Fort Lafiiyette has got you no 
sympathy in England, nor has the newspaper censor- 
ship : this is also hy the hye. 

You seem to admit that this right of rehellion mav 
perhaps he all well enough for some component part 
of a single nation, hut that it does not exist as hetween 
one State and another, independent in all pomts hut 
certain ones on which they have agreed to form a 
partnership. I should have thought that the right to 
break a greater tie surely implied the right to break 
^he less. Every human partnership has in its Aery 
natm'e, be the duration for long periods of years or 
for ever, for one of its mcidents, the necessity of dis- 
solution when it can be no longer carried on suc- 
cessfully ; and every judicature. I believe, decrees 
dissolution in such a case. Xo nation or legislature 
can, I conceive, so legislate for posterity , that posterity 
cannot, if it has physical force, refuse to carry out any 
enactment it conceives destructive of its Avelfare ; and, 
of that conception, posterity is the sole judge. 

Let me put a case ; I admit, a very small one. 
AVhether I am riijht or wrons: in mv facts, it Mill 
illustrate what I mean. I beheve, by vour Constitu- 



GREAT JtlflTArN AM) THK CMTI':!) STATKS. ] I 5 

tif)n, you r;in only collcft (lir('(;t taxes in proportion to 
tlio po])ulation of ruch Statx;. If I. ani n<^ht in this 
su])])()sition, then, on the views taken by your Govem- 
nicnt Jind in yonr letter (;iItnost deifying, as i confcive, 
the piere of parchment called your Constitution), any 
State of about your population, say Indiana, must pay 
the sarru! taxes as Massacliusetts; though you in Massa- 
ehiis(3tts probably arc now twenty times as wealthy as 
Indiana, and, in fifty years, may be two hundred times 
as wealthy. I will assurnf; further (I know it is a 
false assumption), that Massachusetts should croAV 
ov(>r Indiana about this poll-tax privilege, till the 
latter State was wiotli to deatli at the insults. Xow, 
is Indiana to ])ut up with tliis state of things till 
(modo ci forma prescribed by the ])archment) it can 
get it altered (if, which I suppose is the case, the 
parchment hap])(;ns to say 1)0W the knot is to be 
untied)? The persistent use by your statesmen of 
this " artificial and technical " view, has, I believe, 
been most unhappy. Yet am I wrong in understand- 
ing your letter to say, that this view is an article of 
faith fV)r which America would fight a world in arms? 
As to your national life, and tlie necessity of all 
America, from Atlantic to Pacific, being under one 
(xovernment, this also a])pears to us here a most base- 
less idea. Silly as you may deem the belief, 1 fully 
and honestly believe that Massachusetts, if it wt-re a 
nati(ni by itself, would, in many ways, have much 
more of tlie respect of European communities, and 
more influence in the worhh tlian would be command- 



116 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

ed by an Union boundless in its acreage, but such as 
is depicted in Mr. Lincoln's letter to H. Greeley, in 
which it is made a matter of perfect indifference 
whether there be or be not slavery as an established 
part of the system. For my part, I can t see why the 
President might not just as well have said " piracy " as 
" slavery," in his celebrated letter, if the South enter- 
tain (as I dare say they do), and would avow (as they 
certamly would be too cunning just now to do), that 
piracy as well as slavery is a part of the Christian 
dispensation, as now rightly comprehended. Accord- 
ing to Confederate Vice-President Stephens, " Slavery 
is the corner-stone which the builders have rejected." 
Surely, if this be so, the next stone above it must be 
piracy. 

If your Constitution is treated as the Lares and 
Penates of the New World, the Monroe doctrine seems 
further to be a demigod with you. To us in England, 
the idea of any European power agreeing to become 
the sovereign of the Southern States, should they ever 
contrive to get separate, (the Grand-master Free-mason 
to lay this or these buildmg-stones of the Devil in the 
new edifice,) seems perfectly extravagant. 

To a considerable extent, your dissensions have led 
us English to a constant comparing of constitutions 
and systems. Our people are as proud (if it be possi- 
ble) of their Constitution as you of yours. The great 
bulk of us devoutly believe our scheme to be a pana- 
cea for all mankind. They would, if they could, 
establish King, Lords, and Commons, and the theo- 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 117 

retical but unusable Veto of the Crown, among even 
the Red Indians. Our newspapers are ]3fiid to be the 
high-priests of this form of devotion. It woukl be 
childish for you Americans to take offence at any thing 
attributable to this cause. On the contrary, " Smile," 
I say, " and believe m the wisdom of differences." 

The contumely with wiiich the black race is treated 
in the Northern States, evidenced in Mr. Lincoln's 
scheme for expatriating your colored citizens, has had 
no little influence here. Surely the blacks are entitled 
to a different handling from those who especially 
proclaim them free. Is it not the fact, that your 
ambassadors have orders not to grant passports to free 
colored people ? 

These, I believe, are the mfluencmg grounds on 
which English sympathy has been so much lost to your 
cause. 

Belief, my dear friend, is not a matter of the will ; 
and surely you will not consider it a mortal insult to 
your nation, if an ignorant, but, like me, most true 
friend of the North, and a mortal hater of the new 
revelation, still is unable to come to any other conclu- 
sion, than that, if you Northern people would let 
Vh'ginia alone, and direct yoiu* powers to keep Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, and get Arkansas and Texas and 
Louisiana, — of all, in short, that can be brought to 
tolerate your rule, — and then let the Gulf States go 
their own way, it would be better for the North, and 
for the human race too. 

I have not yet received the books you are sending 



118 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

me. Of Count Gasparin s book, I have seen . a good 
review (or the commencement rather) m the " Debats." 

It is really desii-able that full evidence should be 
collected and spread abroad, to show what is not un- 
derstood here, but what I myself consider as plain as 
a pikestaff (that is to say, as plain as Senator Brooks's 
cane); viz., that the new "corner-stone" theory (the 
Southern New Jerusalem) is the bottom of the whole 
affak. I suppose Gasparin's book does this. But 
there is one proof Avhich I came across about two 
years ago, in reading some of your State histories, for 
an object connected with the science of political rep- 
resentation, more convincing to me than any other I 
have yet seen. The Legislature of, I think, Louisiana, 
but a Legislature^ and one of the chambers of a 
Slave-State Legislature, passed a vote of some large 
sum of money (fifty thousand dollars, or some such 
sum), as a reward to any one who would kidnap Gar- 
rison, out of your State, I think it was, and carry him 
into theirs. This is the class of facts to get together ; 
though such facts hardly establish, by the way, the 
homogeneity of people, or harmony of State partner- 
ship, on which you so greatly rely in yoiu* letter. 

Hating all war if avoidable, and especially hating, 
instead of rejoicing in, your awful war, I pray you 
may have an early and happy issue out of it. Under 
all events, however, I am and shall remain 

Your very sincere friend, 

Edwin W. Field. 
Hon. Charles G. Loring, Boston, U.S.A. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 119 



IX. 

Boston, October 10, 1SG2. 

My dear Friend, 

Your letter of 23d of September, received yesterday, 
was a truly welcome relief. From your long silence, 
I had at times felt anxious lest my depth of feelmg on 
the subject of my country's cause had betrayed me 
into some seeming trespass upon your just regard for 
your own ; at other times, I feared that I had wearied 
you by unwelcome zeal and pertmacity, from which you 
were seeking shelter in silence. 

I realize most acutely the pain caused to you by 
this most unhappy alienation of our two countries, 
and complaints of your friends on this side of the 
water ; and I can well understand the sickness at 
heart which they create. While deploring, from the 
very depths of my own, your want of sympathy with 
us (arising, as I am constrained to believe, from mis- 
apprehension of the true nature of our cause, and 
its relations to the great principles of government, 
freedom, and humanity, as I understand them), I feel 
that your claims upon my confidence, respect, and 
friendship, are greatly increased by the candor and 
kind manner with which you have listened and re- 
plied to me in a discussion touching subjects so deli- 
cate as those of mternational faith and honor, in 



120 THE PRESENT EELATIONS BETWEEN 

which discussion I occupy the unfavorable, not to say 
unavoidably offensive, position of the complainant. I 
will still hope, that when the war shall be over, and its 
origin, motives, and results shall be better known, we 
shall shake hands over its fruits, in cordial and united 
belief that it was in truth a blessing, however dark 
may be its present disguise ; and that you will love and 
respect us not at all the less for our zeal m such a 
cause. 

I should stop here, my dear friend, and, thanking 
you heartily for your past kind indulgence, should not 
obtrude upon you another word on the unwelcome 
theme, but leave your arguments without attempted 
reply, if it were not evident to me that some of them 
are founded on a misunderstanding of the views which 
I intended to present, but which, it appears, I foiled to 
do in language as clear to others as to myself. Par- 
don me, therefore, in a brief explanation. 

I would premise, however, that I should regret to 
have you think that I, or any of your or my friends 
here, sympathize m the extravagance of your corre- 
spondent from whose letter you quote, but of whose 
name I have no suspicion. It is to me unintelligible, 
otherwise than as a war frenzy^ in which we have no 
fellowship. We do, indeed, from our inmost hearts, 
believe, that a more just or holy war, or one for 
higher and nobler ends, was never waged by man 
since the world Avas, than that which we are now car- 
rying on for the mamtenance of our nationality, and 
of our form of government, against conspirators, who 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 121 

can make no just pretence of past or prospective op- 
pression or wrong, but who have rebelled to crush that 
government for the avowed purpose of erecting a 
despotic aristocracy, founded on human slavery, m its 
place, or on a portion of its ruins. It is the old, 
never-ending struggle between despotism and free- 
dom, in a new form ; and the fate of free institutions 
on this, entk-e continent for centuries to come hangs 
upon it. If this belief, and the willmgness to sacrifice 
treasure and hfe without stint in its vindication, con- 
stitute us madmen, then must we be so accounted ; 
and we are without reply to the indictment. 

That " bigness is not greatness," and that little 
Massachusetts as a nation would be vastly more 
respectable than as a portion of a slave empire, or of 
one, however extensive and mighty, in which slave- 
holders should hold predominant political power, may 
be taken as axioms conceded by every one of her loyal 
sons. 

Now, the misapprehension to which I refer is this. 
You understand me as contending that " there is a 
special binding force in our written Constitution, 
whereby it is to be binding to all eternity on the inhah- 
itants of every State, unless the majority of the other 
States consent to let them out of such agreement." 
You say, that this view is not merely of a literal and 
technical, but " of a most repulsive nature " ; that " the 
Liberals of Europe believe in the right and duty of 
rebellion, under fit provocation and reason, he the Con- 
stitution of the State ivritten or unvyritten ; " that you 

16 



122 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

" cannot comprehend how the feet of there being liter a 
scripta can make the smallest difference." Again : you 
say that we " seem to admit that this right of rebellion 
may perhaps be all well enough for some component 
part of a single nation, but that it does not exist as 
between one State and another, independent in all points 
hut certain ones in which they have agreed to form, a 
partnership ; " but that " you should have thought that 
the right to break a greater tie surely implied the 
right to break the less ; " and that " every human 
partnership) has in its very nature, be the duration 
for long periods of years or for ever, for one of 
its incidents, the necessity of dissolution when it 
can be no longer carried on successfully ; " and, 
finally, " that no nation can so legislate for pos- 
terity, that posterity cannot, if it has physical force, 
refuse to carry out any enactment it conceives de- 
structive of its welfare ; and, of that conception, 
posterity is the sole judge." And you illustrate your 
conception of 7ny theory by the well-put supposed case 
between the States of Massachusetts and Indiana, 
founded on the idea of a partnership existing between 
them. 

From these passages, it is obvious that you under- 
stand my exposition of the nature of our National 
Government to be, that it is founded on a written 
compact between the different States, or a j)artnershlp 
between distinct co-ordinate political corporations, under 
articles which we call the Constitution ; and that my 
main point is, that this peculiarity of our political 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 123 

oro-anization, in bcina: thus founded on a written com- 
pact, renders " rebellion, under fit provocation and 
reason," less justifiable, or less a matter of right, or 
that our Government is compellable to more enduring 
and permanent resistance of such rebellion, than would 
be the case if no such written compact existed. 

Now, this is an entire misapprehension of the views 
I intended to present ; and I much regret that any 
want of explicitness, or of suitable precaution in nega- 
tiving such inferences, should have led to it. 

Our Constitution, on wliich our nationality is based, 
is not a compact between the several States, nor, in any 
sense, a partnership between them. It is the organic 
law of nationalitj/, adopted by the citizens of all the 
States combining themselves into one people as a nation. 
The preamble runs thus : " We, the rEorLE of the 
United States, in order to form a more perfect union, 
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide 
for the common defence, promote the general welfare, 
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and 
our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution 
for the United States of America." Not (I pray you 
to mark) " JVe, the several sovereign and independent 
States,'' heretofore confederated merely, and already 
known by the partnership name, if you please, (for such 
it then was,) of " the United States ; " but " We, the 
people of the United States,'' the constituent citizens 
and voters of each and all of them, do, for the pur- 
pose of more perfect union and all the other enume- 
rated purposes of one national life, " ordain and 



124 THE PEESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

establish this Constitution ;'' electing, nevertheless, as 
a neio-born nation^ to be still known by the same name 
which our several States, as States, heretofore assumed 
under theh old league of confederation, now merged 
in complete national individuality. We, the people, 
keep the name ; but we henceforth change in toto the 
substance of the thing. 

This Constitution was adopted and ratified, not hy 
the States in their corporate capacities, hut hy the peo- 
ple of the several States, in popular conventions ; not 
acting by or through their respective State legisli^tures 
or executive officers or any other State representatives, 
but m their primary capacity of citizens of one country, 
forming for themselves a new government. 

Every citizen owes to the Constitution, and to the 
National Government which it creates, immediate per- 
sonal allegiance, in the same manner and to the same 
^xtent as respects all purposes of National Government, 
as if no State organization or any other interior politi- 
cal institution were in existence. The States, indeed, 
are recognized in the Constitution as political corpora- 
tions for certain purposes ; and their sovereignty, in 
all matters not delegated to the National Government 
or prohibited to the several States, is carefully pre- 
served ; and they, in their corporate capacities, are 
represented in the Senate of the United States, though 
themselves no ixirties to the compact But for all pur- 
poses of national life and goveryiment, internal and 
external, the citizens of the several States absolutely 
surrendered all then- State rights and obligations, and 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 125 

their individuality as members of such States, and 
agreed to be fused, or merged, into one people, with 
all the corresponding rights and privileges, and subject 
to all the duties and obligations, involved in a common 
nationality. 

No State, therefore, as such, can chiim any right of 
secession ; for it was no party to the compact form- 
ing the Constitution. No State, as such, can dissolve 
the connection between its people and the General 
Government ; for the State did not create that connec- 
tion. No State can authorize its citizens to revolt 
against the General Government ; for their allegiance 
to that Government is their own direct personal obliga- 
tion : and any attempted dissolution of that obligation, 
or revolt against it, is, notwithstanding any such 
assumed authority or ratification by a particular State, 
a crime in the revolting citizens of that State, as indi- 
vidual persons, against the General Government, as 
fully as if no such State authority had attempted to 
intervene. 

The Government, therefore, in attempting to put 
down this Rebellion, is not makmg war against any 
State or States as such, nor against the whole people 
of any State or States, but agamst its own individual 
revolted subjects, — organized rebels in arms, guilty 
of treason, — who happen to be resident in those 
States ; and this is wholly irrespective of their relation 
to any particular State, as being at the same time its 
citizens or subjects, for purposes within the legitimate 
sphere of State authority. 



126 THE PRESENT EELATIONS BETWEEN 

The case, therefore, is, in this respect, precisely 
similar to the case of any other government's nnder- 
taking to suppress treason or revolt, and is to be 
considered and judged of upon precisely the same prin- 
ciples of domestic and international law. Nor did I 
mean to be understood, that, because our nationality is 
thus based upon a written Constitution, to which every 
citizen is a party, therefore the moral right of revo- 
lution or rebellion, '•^ under Jit provocatioii and reason^' 
is less clear and indisputable than it Avould be if no 
such written Constitution were in existence, and our 
nationality had been formed, or grown \\\), without 
one. On the contrary, we maintain that doctrine of 
the right of resolution, under fit provocation, as an 
essential axiom of free government ; and, in the case 
you put, if I were a citizen of Indiana, I should pro- 
bably gird myself or my sons for the struggle, as I do 
now, though with infinitely less reason. 

If you recur to my letters (Nos. V. and VI.), in which 
I insist upon the point, that the peculiarity of our 
national organization, as founded on a written Consti- 
tution, renders impracticable any consent to the 
separation of the revolted States while insisting upon 
theh right of secession, and renders equally impracti- 
cable any other of the courses suggested by you as 
bemg advisable to enable us to subdue or get rid of 
them, you will see that this argument was only in 
reply to those particular positions taken by you, with- 
out any reference to the general question of the right 
of rebellion or revolution for justifiable cause. The 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 127 

discussion was upon the riglits of, or the policy proper 
to be adopted by, the existing Government of the United 
States, and not upon the rights which would exist, 
or might be advisable for the people to act upon in 
a primary contention, for the formation of a neiv 
Government. 

Take, for instance, the rirjht claimed by the States 
whose people are in rebellion, to secede from the 
Union purely as a matter of right ; not because of 
any wrong or oppression suffered at the hands of the 
National Government, but from choice merely. You 
asked, " Why not let them go?" and you think that it 
is wonderful that we wish to retain any connection with 
such a portion of " the Devil's kingdom," instead of 
rejoicing in the opportunity to be rid of it. My answer 
was, that, as our nationality is founded on our written 
compact, we cannot concede this luithdraival of a State 
to he a right, without at once admitting that we have 
no bond -of nationality ; nor without, at the same time, 
admitting that everi/ other State may, at any time, 
depart at its pleasure. And, upon that hypothesis, 
where would be our nationality ] what its known boun- 
daries ? what its power over its subjects? what the 
obligation or value or permanency of its contracts ? 
what its rights of property in treasure, naval and mili- 
tary armaments, territories, &c., &c. ? 

But you perceive at once, that this argument does 
not touch the question of the revolutionary right of 
the people of those States to revolt for a justifiable 
cause : that species of right remains just as it was. 



128 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

notwitlistanding the litera scripta. Is it not plain, 
therefore, that on this j^oint, and to this extent, (name- 
ly, the asserted right, not to revolt for cause, but to 
secede without cause,) we must claim that our compact 
is " bmding" to all eternity " (to use your emphatic 
language) on the inhabitants of each State, unless the 
2)eo2)Ie of the other States consent to dissolve if? 
and that, so long as this pretended right of secession 
at pleasure is adversely asserted by force of arms, we 
must " fight a world in arms," if need be, rather than 
yield it ? And, is not the doctrine of your own, and 
of every civilized government on earth, though not 
founded on written comjKicts, essentially the same? 
Do you admit the right of Scotland, Ireland, or Wales, 
to secede, without justifying cause, and set up inde- 
pendent national sovereignties at pleasure \ 

But the peculiarity of our written Constitution does 
bear upon us, with great practical effect, in another 
important view of this subject, to which my argument 
was intended to point ; namely, the right of the Gov- 
ernment to consent, for any cause, to any separation 
of portions of the national domain, or the exemption of 
any of its subjects from their allegiance to it. If, in 
the present case, the people of the loyal States, al- 
though denying the right of secession claimed by the 
Slave States or their people, were desirous that 
the proposed separation should take place for the 
reasons assigned by you or for any other, it clearly 
would not be competent for our National Government 
to make, or assent to, any such partition of the nation- 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 129 

al sovereignty and domain, or any such withdrawal of 
the allegiance of any portion of its subjects ; because 
all the powers of the General Government, and all the 
duties and ohllgatlons of the citizens to that Govern- 
ment, are expressly defined and limited hy the loritten 
Constitution : and this was made by the ^jeo^;/e, who 
by its terms, while granting certain powers to the Gen- 
eral Government, expressly reserved to themselves and 
their respective States all powers not so granted, de- 
fined, and limited ; and it is self-evident that such 
powers of disintegration or alienation or denationali- 
zation arc not among those granted, but, of necessity, 
still reside onlj/ in the whole people. 

In this respect there is a wide and essential differ- 
ence betAveen our form of government and yours, or 
any other of which I have knowledge. Our Govern- 
ment is restricted from acting in an emergency which 
yours could meet ; as the power to release from alle- 
giance your Colonies, or any portion of your national 
domain, resides, I suppose, unquestionably in your Gov- 
ernment, without the necessity of any intervention by an 
act of the peopAe. Whether this is to be considered a 
defect or an advantage in the fabric of our Constitution, 
is here immaterial : but it obviously does not touch the 
right of revolution for justifiable cause ; and therefore 
does not render the Constitution obnoxious to the 
charge of imposing heavier or more permanent chains 
upon its subjects than those by which the subjects of 
all other governments are held. It only substitutes 
the people at large, in place of the existing Govern- 



130 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

ment of the day, as the final judge of the expediency 
or right of national disintegration, or alienation of 
national domain. Nor does it, as I apprehend, affect 
the question of any disintegration of the national domain 
which may be eifected hy force of arms, either through 
foreign invasion or through internal revolution, wheth- 
er for justifiable cause or otherwise. If the rebels 
should succeed in establishing their independence by 
their own ability or by the aid of foreign intervention, 
and our National Government should be driven to 
terms recognizing it, I suppose that the national au- 
thority of the Government over the remaining States, 
and the allegiance to it of the people of those States, 
would remain unimpaired, such recognition implying 
no admission of the right of, nor any assent to, seces- 
sion at will. 

My only object in my argument was to satisfy you, 
that our written Constitution rendered it impossible for 
our Government to assent to secession, as matter of 
right or of expediency, in the manner and for the rea- 
sons you suggested, and at the same time to retain our 
nationality. 

Again : when you said, that, if we were fighting to 
put down slavery or to suhjtigate the rebels as public 
enemies, and not for the purpose of receivmg them to 
our bosoms as fellow-citizens and partners again, we 
should have the sympathy and applause of Europe, 
but that it was incomprehensible how we could wish 
to be again united with their " infernal system," my 
reply was, as above suggested, that we could not do 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 131 

either of these thino-s without abandonins: or violating; 
our JO art of the contract contamecl in the written Con- 
stitution, and so releasing them from all obligation 
under it, and thus destroying the only bond of our 
nationality. 

If we were to carry on this war for the lyurpose of 
compelling the rebels to emancipate their slaves, Blthoiigh 
they were willing to cease from all opposition to the 
Government provided they were allowed to retain 
their slaves under the Constitution ; or should we war 
agamst them for the purpose of subduing them as 
foreign enemies, in order to possess ourselves of their 
territories as conquered countries, — we could no 
longer claim of them a particle of allegiance, or deny 
their right of resistance, after having ourselves im- 
pliedly admitted that they could, and did, by their 
own mere will and act, destroy the national bond, and 
convert themselves into foreigners. They might, in 
that case, well maintain, that we were not attempting 
to re-instate or enforce the only National Government 
which the Constitution has created, but were seeking 
to establish by force another and new one, to which 
neither we nor they had before been consenting par- 
ties. 

But this again, you will perceive, does not in any 
degree affect the right of rebellion or revolution for 
justifiable cause, or compel our Government in such 
case to be more pertinacious and unyielding than any 
other. 

In a word, my whole argument, founded on the 



132 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

peculiarity of a written Constitution, was, or was in- 
tended, to show, that under it our Government has no 
power either to consent, however wilUng, to the sepa- 
ration of any State, or to admit its right to secede at 
its own pleasure, or to avoid resisting any attempt to 
maintain such right by force of arms, or to treat any 
of its subjects as foreign enemies, or to attempt to 
change the internal local institutions of any State, 
without, ipso facto, confessing or admitting that the 
bond of nationality is broken or abandoned, and re- 
storing the people of that and of every other State to 
their original x^re-existing freedom from all allegiance 
to it ; — this argument leaving tlie right of revolution 
for justifiable cause untouched. 

Nor does this doctrine interfere, as I apprehend, in 
any degree, with the right to exercise all needful mili- 
tary authority over persons or property, even to the 
emancipation of the slaves, should that extreme meas- 
ure be demanded by the exigency as a means for 
subduing the revolt, and compelling the rebels to 
return to their allegiance : for military authority is 
only the law of force, bounded by the necessity which 
calls for it ; and the Constitution recognizes the right 
to hold rebels, when subdued, only as other lawful 
subjects, obedient to its obligations ; while, for the 
purpose of subduing them, it leaves the military power 
of the nation in the hands of its constitutional agents, 
free to act as the exigency of the case may require. 

I have thought it necessary thus to explain our 
position on this point, — the power of consenting to 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 133 

secession, — concerning- which, it seems that I have 
inadYcrtently led you into error. I have only to add, 
that ahhough our Government has not the powers 
above alhided to, they being reserved to the people, 
the Constitution does provide a mode of changing the 
Constitution itself by amendments, which might be to 
the effect of vesting such powers m the Government, 
with the view to their exercise, or to the effect of 
directly releasing the people of any one or more States 
from their allegiance. 

I am not surprised at your allusions concerning the 
imprisonments in Fort Lafayette, the censorship of the 
press, &c. They are griefs to us all, but acquiesced 
in as temporary expedients, made necessary, in the 
exercise of martial law, by the peculiar evil under 
Avliich we labor, in carrying on a war against treason 
and rebellion, from having in our army and our navy, 
in our ci\'il government, and throughout all society, a 
greater or less number of secret secessionists, or sym- 
pathizers with the rebels, who resort to all means of 
communicating to them, in print or privately, the plans 
and movements and strength, &c.,of our army and navy, 
and every thing that could aid them and harm us. 

Perhaps we acquiesce the more readily and patiently 
from the conviction, always pervading our thoughts, 
that the evil can never become extensive or danger- 
ously oppressive, or of any duration, without our con- 
sent ; w^e having the immediate remedy always at hand 
in the hallot-hox, which makes and unmakes legislators 
and rulers at our will. The evil, however, and the 



134 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

necessity of resorting to this mode of cure, are already 
growing less every day. 

Allow me to say, that I think you misapprehend the 
meaning and true bearings of President Lincoln's 
letter to Mr. Greeley, when you construe it as imply- 
ing a perfect indifference whether there be or be not 
slavery as an established part of our Southern system. 
It is perfectly well known that he, as a man, is utterly 
opposed to the institution, and would gladly aid m its 
termination by all lawful and constitutional means ; but 
that, as a loyal citizen, and as the Chief Executive un- 
der the Constitution, he ought not to interfere with it, 
or seek its destruction, so long as it continues under 
the protection, though indhectly, of the Constitution 
which he has sworn to support. He, as the head 
of the nation, is bound to maintain the Constitution and 
the Union both inviolate. If he can do this without 
destroying slavery, he has no right to seek its destruc- 
tion ; for in so doing, unless as a military necessity, 
he would become a traitor himself to the very instru- 
ment from which alone he derives all his authority. 
If, however, he cannot maintain the Constitution and 
the Union without striking down slavery in order to 
save THEM, then he is, in my judgment, justified in 
destroying it, and ought to do so. And this, as I 
interpret his letter, is just what he means. 

In regard to the treatment of the black man in 
some of the Free States, it is, I confess, a sad com- 
mentary upon the broad principles of equality and 
philanthropy we profess ; justly exposing us to re- 



CxREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 135 

proach, and diminishing our claim for sympathy in 
this contest. I bcHcve, however, that the prejudice 
of race, so strong everywhere, is undergoing amelio- 
ration among us ; and I trust that we may hereafter 
become more true to our principles and professions 
by the establishment of perfect political equality among 
all classes of citizens of the Republic. But when you 
cite, as evidence on this point, the President's schemes 
of voluntary colonization of the blacks, connected 
with the idea of their gradual emancipation, reflect, 
I pray you, on what would be the condition of that 
unfortunate race, suddenly made free, not among the 
people of the present Free States, not at the North, 
nor in Canada, — whither they do not desire to go and 
reside of then- own free choice, — but in the sunny 
States of the South which they now inhabit. Con- 
ceive of three millions or more of emancipated blacks 
living all at once on terms of legal equality with six 
millions of whites, accustomed from infancy, one and 
all, to look upon them as beasts of burden, born to 
subjection. Can there, will there, be 2^eace between 
such races claiming equal rights 1 If not, what fate 
can the philanthropist find for the black man? If the 
prejudice against him as an equal is as strong as you 
suppose, even now, at the North, must it not be, for 
some generations at least, insuperable, and quite intol- 
erable to him as a freeman, at the South? Can 
humanity, in view of this stubborn f\ict, devise for him 
any practicable scheme more humane than coloniza- 
tion on some soil of his own, in a clime of his own 



136 THE PEESENT EELATIONS BETWEEN 

choice ? Is not the probable alternative implacable 
war between races that will not mingle ? You ask, 
in connection with this subject, whether it is not a fact, 
that our ambassadors have orders not to grant pass- 
ports to free colored people. I answer. No, not to my 
knowledge or belief. You have derived the idea from 
the practice of Mr. Buchanan, and perhaps of prior 
administrations under slaveholding control. Mr. Lin- 
coln's administration issues no such orders, I presume : 
on the contrary, his Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, 
issues passports, when applied for, to colored persons 
as freely as to white ; at least, I have seen it so stated 
in our newspapers, and believe it to be true. 

A plan has been suggested of appropriating the 
State of Florida for the free blacks and liberated 
slaves who may elect to settle there. It has long 
been a pet theory with me, that a portion of the Gulf 
States must eventually become the refuge of the black 
man, under some relation to us alike beneficial and 
safe for them and ourselves ; but the mode and time 
must be left to the logic of events, which, under God's 
guidance, are rapidly hurrying us on to exigencies, 
positions, and duties, into the nature of which no 
human foresight can penetrate, and for which we 
camiot now even begin to provide. I rest, however, 
in the consoling and inspu'ing belief, that this mighty 
upheaving of our nation is to result m the speedy 
termination of the infernal institution, which, so long 
its curse, had become at length its flagrant shame in 
the ascendency acquired by it in our national councils ; 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 137 

and that God, in his good providence, will guide us 
in the restoration of liberty to those of his children 
who have hitherto been trampled upon by the now 
desperate aristocracy with which we arc contending. 

The evidence that slavery was and is the sole 
cause of the Rebellion is so conclusive, and now so 
distinctly admitted at the South, that it will soon be 
impossible for any rational man, willing to look at the 
truth, to doubt it. In confirmation of this, I send to 
you an extract from the " Richmond Enquirer " (the 
best possible authority upon the subject), which tells 
tln^ truth most unmistakably : — 

" It is proposed in some parts of the South to make 
a forced conscription of slaves for piu'poses of labor. 
As the tvar originated and is earned on in great i^urt 
for the defence of the slaveholder in his proi^erty- 

rlghtS AND THE PERPETUATION OF THE INSTITUTION, he 

ought to he first and foremost in aiding by every yneans 
in his imwer the triumph and success of our arms. 
The slaveholder ought to remember, that, for every ne- 
gro he thus furnishes, he puts a soldier in the ranks." 

I still cherish the hope, though all ground of it 
seems daily vanishing, that England will yet come to 
the perception of the truth regardmg this Rebellion, 
and view the course of her people in relation to it 
with hardly less regret than that course has caused 
to us. 

Ever most faithfully your friend, 

Charles G. Loring. 
Edwin W. Field, Esq. 

18 



138 THE PEESENT KELATIONS BETWEEN 



X. 



Hampstead, 12 October, 1862. 

My dear Mr. Loring, 

I thought I had concluded our " belligerent" cor- 
respondence ; but I have just received your parcel of 
books, and must send my acknowledgments. Count 
Gasparin's I have already read much of. To a con- 
siderable extent, of course, I agree with him : but 
his leading principle, that Europe has no right 
to form an opinion how far the North should try to 
" crush the rebellion " or allow secession, seems to me 
childish ; and his avowed hatred of all rebellion will 
not find a universal echo in Europe, I trust, or add to 
the influence of his book. 

Bigelow's " Tariif Question " wants a statistical inves- 
tigation, and an amount of scientific study, I fear I am 
too prejudiced to give. It is amusing to find him 
quoting the old exploded views of English protec- 
tionists, disavowed now by the very propounders 
themselves. Push out his views to their legitimate 
consequences, and every household should dine on 
home-made crockery, and eat home-grown meat, how- 
ever coarse, dirty, and porous the plate, or dear the 
viand. This would be sacrificing a part of one's meals 
to the Lares of protection, indeed. I can understand 



GEEAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 139 

and respect its being done upon religious grounds. 
When I came to London, a boy, to learn my trade, 
forty odd years ago, some of my friends knew old 
Taylor, the Platonist. The story they used to tell, I 
dare say vamped up a trifle, was, that he sacrificed a 
piece of every rump-steak or chop to Jupiter ; a bit 
of good food lost to somebody, if only to his dog. 
But I can respect that kind of wastefulness. Your 
American economist's notion, that, for profit and 
development's sake, every nation is to look to itself 
only, wrap itself up in itself, like Horace's miser, — 
that its trade, if not its charity, is to begin and end at 
home, — must now-a-days, and with modern experi- 
ence, have a known or unknown origin in political 
parties and party objects, and not in philosophy.* 

The other volume, " Among the Pines," by Kirke, 
I have also only just opened. However true in reality, 
it unhappily has too jaunty and artistic an air to be 
believed as a statement of facts. I will tell you a 
story, just come over from some esteemed and most 
truthful lady friends at Cambridge, near your city, — 
worth, to me, any number of volumes ; all-sufficient, 
indeed, to force me to the conclusions I have come to. 
I dare say, it is only one case of a thousand ; but one 
is enough for me. 

There was a young and charming lady, at Boston, 
known to our friends, sent to Boston for education by 

* Wfis I wi'ong in saying " Professor Carey," in my last letter? Should it not 
have been "Bowen"? I remember reading, some years since, one protectionist 
professor's book on political economy, from your side the Atlantic; and, at my age, 
names become dreams to most men, — to me certainly. 



140 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

her father, a New-Orleans merchant, devotedly at- 
tached to her. She received, just before your vrar, 
a letter, tellmg her to make all speed to New Orleans, 
if she would see her father alive, as he was fast sink- 
ing. She made all haste. When she got there, she 
found the letter had been written after he was dead, 
and hy the heirs ! Her mother had black blood in her 
veins ; and the poor child was a slave, and the heirs 
had thus trepanned her home. They seized and sold 
her forthwith. Sold her to what fate ! Devils upon 
earth I call them ! Why, at least, have they not set 
up, long since, that law of the old Greeks, that one 
particle of free blood makes free 1 

I believe there is an insane desire on the part of 
many of you Northerners to have a war with England. 
The appetite " comes," says the proverb, " in eat- 
ing." The taste of blood makes the thirst for blood. 
But I pray God that we English may, in all such 
miseries as war, be kept from any hand-and-glove al- 
liance with those whose laws and manners allow infa- 
mies such as that I have related, and who claim such 
as their peculiar and cherished privilege, — as " the 
corner-stone of their edifice " : and, hoping devoutly 
for the future good of the North, I pray also that you 
Northerners may never be tempted into any hand-and- 
glove alliance or union with them either ; least of all 
into that most intimate of unions for which you are 
fighting, I think so unhappily. I deplore, from my 
heart, that wise men among you can desire to have 
such union, be it even at the expense you seem all 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 141 

SO willing to incur, of recognizing this corner-stone 
of the edifice, dng, as I heheve it, from hell. I do 
declare, that I would infinitely sooner ally myself 
with a set of pirates, a Black Band of robbers or 
Arabs, than with those whose very civilization is to 
be vauntingly based on such principles. Mere thiev- 
ing by violence, I think, in comparison, quite respect- 
able and lovable. You Northerners could never, 
I feel sure, have countenanced and applauded such 
a letter as that of the President, to which in my last 
I alluded, if you did not, as a nation, habitually look 
at the black race with Heathen contempt, rather 
than with Christian pity. 

I deeply lament for our own English sake, as well 
as in respect of the unfairness and brutal coarseness 
of the conduct as regards the North, the laudatory 
way in w^hich our papers, so many of them, speak of 
the South in studied comparison with the North. 
The South should never, if I had my will, be spoken 
of without the epithet " blood-selHng," or other such, 
stuck to its name. I do not wonder at your Northern 
anger. The writers in question hope to excite it. The 
more insolent towards you the language they invent, 
the more proud they are of their own genius ; but, 
till you come to loathe a slave connection, I, for one, 
shall all the same continue to think you mortally 
wrong. 

But I have written too much for any one who writes 
from feeling, and not from knowledge of the subjects 
we have been treating ; and who writes, also, with no 



^ 



142 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

practice or aptitude for dealing with such matters : 
and so I will now, if you please, close the paper and 
theme, far too long dwelt on by me ; and this shall be 
" longce finis chartceque viceque.'' 

Yours very truly, 

Edwin W. Field. 

Hon. Charles G. Loring, 

Boston, Massachusetts. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 143 



XL 



* Boston, November 13, 1862. 

My dear Friend, 

I wrote my answer to your letter of September 23d 
on the day after its arrival ; and having concluded, 
in conformity with your assent, to put our corre- 
spondence into print, (leaving the question of publi- 
cation, or private circulation only, for future deter- 
mination,) I decided to send it to you in that form, 
inasmuch as I had taken no new positions, nor at- 
tempted any further replies to your arguments, but 
confined myself mainly to the correction of an er- 
roneous interpretation of my views of the binding 
force of our Constitution as a written compact (into 
which my want of more careful phraseology may 
have tended to lead you), with responses to some of 
yoru' general remarks or inquiries to which I could 
not perceive that you would care to rejoin ; and I 
anticipated that you would have received it without a 
much greater interval of time than would be required 
for its transmission in the usual form by mail : but 
it has taken much more than I expected, to have 
our correspondence printed to my satisfaction; con- 
siderable delay being incurred by the illness of my 
friend who undertook the correction of the proofs, — 
a task for which my inexperience as an author makes 



144 THE PEESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

me unfit. And it thus happens that I receive yours 
of the 12th of October before having despatched 
mine of the 10th. 

I have but httle to say in reply. I think the com- 
plexity of the question, and the peculiar circumstances 
of our political and social condition, which we alolie 
can fully know and appreciate, constitute no slight 
ground for the opinion of Count Gasparin; not, per- 
haps, that Europe has no right to form any opinion 
(for some she must of necessity have) hoAV far we 
should try to crush the rebellion or prevent secession, 
but, at the least, that such opinion should be very 
carefully considered, with some distrust of her com- 
parative means of judgment, some (leference to the 
views of those most deeply interested, some faith in 
the purity and sincerity of their motives, and some 
sympathy in their sacrifices of all that is most dear 
. to them in a cause which they believe to be alike 
that of God and man. But, in all these particulars, 
English opinion certainly, if not European also to a 
great extent, with but few honorable exceptions, has 
been and is, as it seems to us, most lamentably wanting. 
We see no answers, no willingness even to listen to 
our protests and arguments, founded on the neces- 
sities of our condition, compelling us to the work 
of crushing the rebellion and preventing secession 
as the only means of preserving our national life ; — 
no respect for the depth and earnestness of our convic- 
tions ; — no sympathy in the sacrifices of treasure, and 
of lives far dearer than treasure, which we are mak- 



GREAT RUITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 145 

iiig under those convictions ; — but, instead thereof, 
we see the ready, and, as we think, in most cases 
wilUngly bhnd, adoption of the belief of the destruc- 
tion of our nationahty as a foregone conclusion, and 
the (to us) seemingly marvellous conviction of even 
our few friends, that it is not worth saving, but that 
our best course would be to abandon all hopes of its 
preservation, and rush into political chaos, Avith the 
permitted erection of a powerful and permanent slave 
empire to divide with us the hitherto national domain, 
rather than to compel the return of the slaveocracy to 
their allegiance, with the certainty, as we deem it, of 
soon extirpating the curse of slavery from the con- 
tinent by a wise and judicious system of progres- 
sive emancipation. 

You do not contemplate slavery, or any voluntary 
connection with it, with more abhorrence than most 
of us in the Free States : and, for one, I am free to 
say, that rather than consent to have the Constitution 
permanently construed and administered as it was, 
and for some time had been, under the controlling 
influence of slavery, and for the purpose of using that 
Constitution and the Union for its extension and per- 
petuation, and for rendering it a national instead of a 
local institution, I should prefer immediate and entire 
separation from the Slave States, at the cost of having 
a neighboring slave empire, or any thing else ; be- 
cause, however innocently one, born and reared in 
the shadow of slavery, might assent to or aid in such 
extension and perpetuation, a similar assent would 



146 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

make us, with our convictions, guilty of an enormous 
crime. But no such question is before us, and no such 
necessity can ever be enforced upon us. We are fight- 
ing; to re><tore the Union and the Constitution to their 
just supremacy^ and for the suhjngation of slavery under 
them, with no question in our minds that its former 
pohtical power, so flagrantly abused, will be substan- 
tially annihilated, and its early extirpation follow as 
an inevitable political and social necessity ; and in 
full belief that this is the only means of its safe and 
early destruction, and that to jjermit the secession, 
which you seem to think so desirable and reasonable, 
would be not only the most eff'ectual mode of con- 
tinuing to ourselves its hateful presence and accursed 
political influences, but the only one by which its exist- 
ence can he extended and jjeiyetucded. 

I think, my dear friend, that if you Avill give a lit- 
tle more consideration to these elements of our case, 
and the incessant animosity exhibited by your press 
generally, and the conduct of large j)ortions of your 
people in enabling the rebels to continue the contest 
(without which aid they could not maintain it for 
a month), you will be disposed to qualify, if not to 
discard, the belief suggested in your last letter, that 
" there is an insane desh'e on the part of many of us 
Northerners to have a war with England," founded in 
" the thirst for blood " excited by " the taste " of it in 
this war. Indeed, I cannot think that you realized the 
full force of your expression when penning it. That 
there is a general, not to say universal feeling, that 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 147 

England greatly wrongs us in sentiment and opinion, 
and in essential aid to the traitors in arms against us, 
and has proved herself a foe where we most confi- 
dently looked for a friend, I cannot deny ; nor can I 
see how we could think otherwise. But the feeling, as 
far as known to me, is one of grief and disappoint- 
ment more than of angry resentment, with a profound 
conviction that the avenging Nemesis will not require 
the imbruing of our hands in her blood. We think 
we see consequences to her of this willing alienation 
of a great and growing nation, kindred in blood, 
religion, and love of freedom, far more serious and 
permanent than a temporary sanguinary war would 
be, however it might end ; and we are content to rest 
on them. 

Surely, my dear friend, you cannot believe that we, 
who are pouring out the blood of our brothers and 
children like water in this struggle in the cause of 
our country and of God (for such we believe it to be), 
can wish to add to the hecatomb by a war with you, 
or that the sacrifices thus made on the altar of patriot- 
ism inspire us with a cannibal thirst for human blood. 
No, my friend : if there must be war between us and 
England, — which I pray God to avert, — its sin 
and blood will be on her head, and not on ours. 

As to all questions about free-trade, tariff's, &c., I 
profess to have very little scientific knowledge ; but it 
seems to me quite obvious, that, however plausible or 
sound any theory may be upon settled data or assumed 
hypotheses, there is no such necessary similarity of 



148 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

condition in any two great commercial nations as to 
render it alike applicable to both. We have no doubt, 
that in England's present condition, standing, as she 
does, at the head of the manufacturing and commer- 
cial interests of the world, unrestricted free trade is 
her true policy ; though she does not, even now, hold 
to it in articles which she neither produces nor manu- 
factures, (as, for instance, tobacco, of which this coun- 
try is the chief producer,) and thus falsifies her own 
theory where it conflicts with a particular interest. 
Nor have we any doubt, that, before the establish- 
ment of this supremacy (entirely owing, as we be- 
lieve, to her ancient rigid system of protection), free 
trade would not, and could not, have been considered 
either politic or possible. 

Our convictions are equally clear, that with our 
vast extent of territory, diversities of climate, indefi- 
nite capacities of production, and varied and enor- 
mous internal commerce, (rendering us a world within 
ourselves,) and especially in our present condition 
and pressing necessities, the protective system is alike 
essential to our prosperity and our independence. 

It is a question which each nation has a right to 
settle for itself, avoiding only discriminations, with 
obviously hostile design, against any one nation as 
distinguished from the rest. 

The sad story to which you allude, although true in 
some of its essential tragic elements, and in that most 
profoundly illustrative of the hatefulness and demoral- 
izing influences of slavery, and of one of the phases 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 149 

of Southern life represented in " Home among the 
Pines," is not true in others, as I am told upon in- 
quiry of friends in Cambridge. 

The young lady (for such she was in disposition, 
accomplishments, and manners) was received into 
society as the daughter of a wealthy Southern gentle- 
man. She was sent here for education, and remained 
for several years, Slie was supplied by him with 
money abundantly, and became very attractive as 
possessing much beauty, vivacity, and various taste. 
She voluntarily returned home upon hearing of her 
father's illness, and found him and his affairs in a 
helpless condition ; and soon afterwards died of fever, 
as it is alleged and believed, at the house of a married 
sister in another State, though near to the residence 
of her father. If the mother was, as is understood, 
a slave, the daughter would unquestionably, as I 
understand the laws of the Slave States, have been 
legally accounted among his salable chattels if she 
had survived him without manumission, and his 
creditors or heirs had claimed her as a slave. If 
the mother were not a slave, the existence of such 
irregular connections, the frequent if not necessary 
results of the institution, is hardly less destructive of 
the happiness and position of the progeny. The life 
of this young lady was made miserable by knowledge 
of her birth ; and death was a happy release from 
that misery, if not from the infinitely more wretched 
fate, which, by the laws of slavery, might otherwise 
have befallen her. 



150 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

You have no right to question that our abhorrence 
and loathing, in the free States, of this infernal 
ownership and trade in human flesh, inherited by a 
portion of our country, is as profound and animating 
as your own. I believe it is much more so ; being 
with you a mere sentiment, while with us are added 
to it the consciousness of the disgrace it brings as a 
recognized political institution in parts of our country 
under the a?gis of the Constitution, and the daily prac- 
tical outrages upon our feelings and sense of duty in 
its perpetual struggles for ascendency and ever-grasp- 
ing encroachments in our national councils. Nor can 
you doubt the entire sincerity of our declaration, that 
we feel, and believe we know, that, in fighting to main- 
tain the Constitution and the Union, we are so far from 
fighting to continue a voluntary partnership in the ac- 
cursed system of slavery (as you seem to believe), we 
are, by necessary consequence, fighting for its pre- 
sent subjugation and eventual extirpation. This war 
was commenced against us, by the Slave States, for tlie 
subversion of the Constitution and the Union, because 
of the shackles imposed by them upon the extension 
and perpetuation of slavery, and of the perception by 
the slaveocracy that the power of abusing them for 
those ends was passing from their hands. The avowed 
purpose of it was the erection of a slave empire 
upon their ruins. We entered into it solely for the 
maintenance of the Union and the Constitution : but, 
in defending ourselves in a war undertaken by 
our enemies for such purposes, it has, of inevitable 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 151 

necessity, become, on our part, a war also substantially 
against slavery ; and cannot terminate successfully 
for us, without such an annihilation of the political 
influence and power of the slaveocracy, such a weak- 
ening of all the former securities of the institution, 
and such a manifestation of its inherent rottenness, 
weakness, and hatefulness, as will insure its eventual 
and not very distant abolishment under the Constitu- 
tion and the Union which we are seeking to restore. 
Or it may be, that the stern necessity of the contest may 
compel us to the immediate emancipation of the slaves, 
as one of the justifiable means of subduing the lle- 
bellion ; although such emancipation would not abolish 
the power, in the Slave States, to hold slaves thereafter, 
if it should become possible to acquire them. 

Our success, therefore, mu'st, in any event, have the 
effect substantially to destroy the institution which you 
so justly denounce ; while the measure which you the- 
oretically advocate, and which a large portion of your 
countrymen are diUgently working by material aid to 
effect, — namely, the independence of the Slave 
States, — is precisely that, and that alone, by which 
this institution can be extended and perpetuated, and 
become more rampant and uncontrollable in its de- 
testable power and influences. 

It gives to us the most sincere and gratifying encour- 
agement in reference to the future relations of our 
countries, that there are among you men of the ability 
and candor of Professor Cairnes and Mr. Mill, who 
have undertaken to enlighten your countrymen as to 



152 THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN 

the true nature of this contest, and the consequences 
of success to the rebel cause. I read Professor Cairnes's 
book, with great admiration of his masterly grasp of 
the subject, last October ; though dissenting from one 
of his conclusions, as to the necessity of permitting 
the establishment, by a portion of the Slave States, of 
an independent slave empire, — a conclusion which I 
doubt not that he will rejoice with us in finding erro- 
neous, when the struggle shall be over. I have not 
yet read the review of it, by Mr. Mill, in the " Westmin- 
ster" (which I shall hasten to get), but learn that it is 
entirely confirmatory of the views taken by Professor 
Cairnes, excepting in the conclusion alluded to, from 
which he dissents. I presume that England has no 
profounder or more just thinker within her realm 
than Mr. Mill, whose works are as extensively known 
here as there ; and Professor Cairnes seems to have 
entitled himself to stand in the foremost rank of her 
political jurists. If they shall succeed in disabusing 
the English mind, in any considerable degree, of the 
error, and consequent injustice, now pervading it in 
regard to our country and its cause, your country- 
men, no less than mine, will have reason to hold them 
in perpetual honored remembrance. 

And this, my dear friend, brings me to the close, on 
my part, of our indeed very long, but to me very 
interesting and friendly, " beUigerent " correspond- 
ence, as you are pleased to term it ; though surely no 
otherwise belligerent than in the subjects treated of. 
I lament that the vindication of my country was in 



GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 153 

such feeble hands that I leave you unconvinced of 
what seems to us so plain, — the justice of our cause, 
and its claims upon the sympathy of the world, as the 
cause of freedom, humanity, and good government. 
But I confidently trust that it cannot be long before 
this will be as apparent to you and your people as it 
now is to us. 

E: er faithfully your friend, 

Charles G. Loring. 
Edwin W. Field, Esq. 



P. S. — I have no doubt that the author referred to 
in your letter of the 12th of October was Mr. Bowen, 
Professor of Moral Philosophy and Pohtical Economy 
at Cambridge. Mr. Carey, although a very eminent 
writer upon the latter subject, has never, that I re- 
member, been a professor, or been so styled. 



20 



. . ../ y^ ^ ^ 






.-i^r7<>^^^^^^^^^-'^ ± 



CORRESPONDENCE 



ON THE 



PRESENT RELATIONS 

BETWEEN 

GREAT BRITAIN 

AND THE 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



LBFe'05 



